Dish Network, the Meanest Company in America - Businessweek: In a 2001 deposition, Dish’s then lead counsel estimated that the company had employed more than 100 law firms in 10 years. Dish once even sued its own lawyers, Chicago-based Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott, only to end up on the wrong side of a $40 million judgment and with an admonishment from a panel on behalf of the American Arbitration Association that its conduct—which included making claims of unethical conduct against the law firm that were “patently false”—was “egregious.”
Dish’s battle with TiVo (TIVO) over patent infringement took nearly a decade to settle. A federal judge once said of three Dish lawyers that their conduct didn’t “even meet law-school student behavior,” and “presented the saddest day I have seen in my many years in court.” (The lawyers were accused of filing lengthy briefs and motions with no merit as a stall tactic—a familiar charge leveled at Dish attorneys.)