Lawyers Gone Wild

To a certain degree, we are all governed by our experiences. In the case of Wal-Mart, that experience seems to include getting sued – a lot. While I was unable to get exact, recent numbers, a 2001 USA Today report had Wal-Mart stating that they were sued 4,851 times during the year 2000. Another source on the web reported that Wal-Mart was sued 845 times in federal court alone during 1999. The point here is not the preciseness of the numbers, but rather the magnitude, and the simple fact is that Wal-Mart finds itself on the receiving end of lawsuits with great regularity.

Having to deal with plaintiff’s lawyers on such a regular basis would warp the sensibilities of almost anyone and it appears that a bunker mentality regarding being prepared for lawsuits has crept into Wal-Mart’s investor relations pronouncements. How else can you explain the safe harbor language for forward-looking statements contained in their most recent earnings call?

A transcript of Wal-Mart’s third quarter earnings call shows that their safe harbor statement runs 1,316 words, or about 4 1/2 pages of dense, lawyer drafted prose. By my calculations using the transcript available on Seeking Alpha, this was slightly more than 10% of all the words spoken during the call. Interestingly, this was almost 300 words longer that their second quarter safe harbor statement, which came in at a mere 1,038 words. To get an idea of how things have escalated, their fourth quarter 2005 earnings call used a safe harbor statement containing 455 words. At this rate, pretty soon Wal-Mart’s entire earnings call will consist solely of a safe harbor statement.

I am fortunate enough that I don’t get sued with great regularity, so I may not be as sensitized to this issue as Wal-Mart is, but to me it seems like lawyerly overkill. Here’s an example:

“This call will contain statements that Wal-Mart believes are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, and intended to enjoy the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements provided by that Act. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the use of the words or phrases anticipate, are anticipating, are expecting, assume, could be, expect, forecasting, goal, guidance, guided, is expected, is planning, may affect, plan, will accelerate, will add, will be, could save, will drive, will ring, will be growing, will come, will continue, will cost, will experience, will generate, will grow, will improve, will not continue, will remodel, will see, will spend, will take, would represent, or a variation of one of those words or phrases in those statements or by the use of words and phrases of similar import. Similarly, descriptions of our objectives, plans, goals, targets, or expectations are forward-looking statements.”

The lawyer seems to have parsed through every verb that was going to be used in the call and labeled anything that could possibly be construed as future tense as forward looking. Of course, then for good measure, they throw in the phrase “or a variation of one of those words or phrases in those statements or by the use of words and phrases of similar import” which is legalese for “I can’t think of anything else, but if you can that’s excluded too”. Similarly, it appears as though a lawyer was determined to parse through every statement that Wal-Mart proposed to make during its earnings call, call out anything that could be deemed even slightly a forward looking statement, and specifically disclaim liability for it if things didn’t turn out as represented. That goes on for almost four pages. This is deadly stuff, and I don’t mean that in a positive way. I can’t image what Wal-Mart’s lawyers would do if the company actually took questions from analysts during the call.

All of this points out one of the central tensions of investor relations; the desire of IR practitioners to point out the road the company intends to pursue in order to earn future profits, versus the desire of lawyers to insulate the company from liability in a dangerous world where securities class action attorneys wait to pounce on any slight misstep. I’m not sure where the proper balance exists between these two desires, but management needs to recognize when lawyers are getting in the way of the message and tell them to cut back on the excess verbiage.

Certainly, if the lawyers are taking up over 10% of the message, things have gone too far.