|
|
|
Boies Will Be Boies WHY HE HAS A SPECIAL INTEREST IN ANTITRUST CASES "Those of us who believe in a free-market economy ... in private enterprise
and the social and political benefits of a democratic society, which are
highly correlated with free-market economics ... believe antitrust laws
are a critical component of public policy." ON A PRICE-FIXING CASE HIS FIRM BROUGHT LAST YEAR AGAINST VIRTUALLY ALL THE MAJOR VITAMIN MANUFACTURERS IN THE UNITED STATES "One thing I've learned about vitamins is they are a good thing. Your
mother was right. It is important to take your vitamins. It's also important
that people who make them not fix the prices." ON THE CASE HE AND A GROUP OF ATTORNEYS HAVE FILED AGAINST A GROUP OF NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED HEALTH MAINTENANCE ORGANIATIONS "Of all the things I've done ... the HMO case has hit the rawest nerve among the most people. ... We all depend on our doctor to tell us what to do ... to tell us what we need. "Then — when we find out that HMOs are paying doctors to avoid
giving us care ... and are setting up financial incentives for doctors
not to do what is good for the patient, but to do what is financially
good for the HMO — there is a feeling of betrayal and anger and concern
that is very powerful." WHAT HE LEARNED ABOUT COMPUTERS WHILE PREPARING FOR THE MICROSOFT CASE "In the old days, you had monks with pens and not that much was created. Then came the printing press, the photocopy machine, now computers, and you have vastly increased the amount of information that is created. The irony is that the more information that is created, the harder it is to keep. "One thing people now are starting to find is that digitally stored
information is a lot more fragile over a period of time — decades
— than the printed page. We don't have a way of ensuring long term
— I mean centuries — of data storage." HOW HE SPENDS HIS SPARE TIME (AND WHY HE HAS SO LITTLE SPARE TIME TO SPEND) "We take [a family sailing trip] once or twice a year. We have a sailboat ... the Coconut. It was called that before we bought it. ... Every year over New Year's, we go away for 10 days to the Caribbean. "But one of the things I enjoy is practicing law, and when an interesting case, an important case, comes along, one that I think has important public policy aspects, I have a hard time saying no." |