
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 20, 1993                   TAG: 9304200187
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

LAW FIRM SETTLES KEATING SUIT

The nation's second-largest law firm Monday agreed to pay the federal government $51 million and to bar one of its lawyers from representing financial institutions to settle government claims that it concealed fraud at a California savings and loan. The government had sought $200 million to $500 million.

The settlement by Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, a Cleveland-based firm with offices around the world, is the largest law-firm settlement to come out of the drive by federal officials to recoup some of the billions lost in the collapse of the thrift industry.

It came minutes before Jones, Day was set to defend itself against claims by the Resolution Trust Corp. that it aided officials at Lincoln Savings and Loan Association of Irvine, Calif., in misleading government regulators.

Lincoln, which was headed by Charles Keating Jr. and collapsed in 1989, was the nation's costliest S&L failure, with a $2.6 billion tab to taxpayers, and it has come to symbolize the S&L debacle. Keating, 69, is imprisoned in California on criminal charges stemming from Lincoln's collapse.

The RTC had filed a civil suit against Jones, Day alleging that the firm's actions delayed government seizure of the S&L by three years, thus helping to increase the hemorrhage of funds from Lincoln.

by CNB