West Publishing puts itself up for sale

[James Love <love@tap.org>]

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TAP-INFO - An Internet newsletter available from listproc@tap.org
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TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - INFORMATION POLICY NOTE

     West Publishing puts itself up for sale
    
         james love, love@tap.org; 202/387-8030

     In a surprising move, West Publishing announced on tuesday,
August 29, 1995, that it had hired investment bankers Goldman
Sachs and E.G. Edwards to explore the sale or restructuring of
West Publishing.  Details of the announcement appeared in the
Wednesday,  August 30, 1995, issue of the Minneapolis Star
Tribune in a story written by John Oslund.  According to Oslund's
story, West is considering several options, including "taking the
closely held company public through an initial public stock
offering, entering a joint venture or strategic alliance, a
recapitalization to buy out existing shareholders or an outright
sale."  The announcement was made by Dwight Opperman, the
Chairman of the West Publishing board of directors.

     The Star Tribune estimated that West had annual revenues of
about $700 million, and it quoted experts who said the firm might
fetch a price as high as $3 to $4 billion.  [A price that seems
far too high to this observer] . The Star Tribune said that
possible purchasers of the company would include Thomson, the
large Canadian publisher, Dow Jones, or the Washington Post.

     West Publishing is a privately held company and few details
of its finances are publicly known.  The company reports that it
has nine shareholders who own more than 1 percent of the company,
including Dwight Opperman.  Forbes recently reported that the
Opperman "clan" held a majority of the company stock, although
company officials have reportedly asserted that the Opperman
holdings are not quite that high.

     The announcement comes as West is facing increasing
resistance to its monopoly control over the corrected text and
citations to court opinions.  Public interest groups, including
TAP, law librarians, members of state bar associations, other
researchers, and small entrepreneurial high technology firms are
pressing judges and other public officials to disseminate court
opinions electronically, using public domain citations.  Legal
information is slowing showing up on various Internet sites.  The
Government Printing Office (GPO) now provides free online access
to the entire U.S. Code.  Professor Hank Perritt from Villanova
law school and others are trying to organize a coalition of
university law schools to provide free public access to federal
court opinions on the World Wide Web.

     West is a politically active firm which has long boasted an
impressive array of friends in all three branches of government,
as evidenced by the firm's defeat of a Department Justice
proposal to create a public domain database of court opinions,
and the apparent side-tracking of a Justice Department antitrust
probe into West.  But recently West has begun to lose a few.  

     Earlier this year West was shocked by a very public defeat
of a special interest provision in the Paperwork Reduction Act,
after an outpouring of opposition to the provision from the
Internet community.  [Internet Community KO's Anti-FOIA
Provision, http://www.essential.org/listproc/tap-info/0138.html]. 
Next a Star Tribune investigation into West gifts to federal
judges, including members of the Supreme Court, began to erode
West's special relation to the federal judiciary. 
[http://www.startribune.com/westpub/].   Supreme Court Justice
Kennedy publicly asked West to distance itself from the "Devitt"
award and junkets the company had given to federal judges. 
Senator Robert Byrd later read the Star Tribune story into the
Congressional Record and the Senate approved a measure asking the
courts to rewrite their ethics rules.  And in New York,  the
federal judge hearing a key copyright suit against West
disqualified herself, after being queried on her contacts with
the company.

     TAP and a number of other observers think that West cannot
long sustain its current monopolistic control over the body of
federal and state court opinions, and dramatic changes in prices
for its products will be inevitable.

     The Star Tribune's analysis suggests that key West
shareholders believe they can sell the company for a premium
today, before the brunt of increased competition takes its full
toll on the company's profitablity.

     The announcement by West marks the second time that a major
data vendor was sold after a protracted dispute over public
access to a key database.  From 1991 to 1993 TAP and others
fought a long campaign to get the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) EDGAR database available on the Internet.  The
Clinton Administration announced the National Science Foundation
(NSF) would fund the current NYU/IMS Internet demonstration
program in September 1993.  Later Mead decided to sell
LEXIS/NEXIS, its online service, to Reed Elsevier, the
British/Dutch publisher. 

     James Love, TAP
     love@tap.org; 202/387-8030
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