Big question marks hang over the latest proposals from the Financial Accounting Standards Board, reported here, requiring companies to account for the potential cost of ongoing litigation. As The Wall Street Journal points out, it would give attorneys a licence to print money because they would be able to use the information to force settlements and influence juries. Knowing what lawyers are like, it's a good point. And bad guesswork by companies would leave them vulnerable.

Drug companies have been leading the charge against the proposal, claiming there is no way they would know how much those law suits might cost. In their letter to the FASB, Pfizer Inc., Merck & Co., Eli Lilly & Co., Johnson & Johnson, Novartis AG, and Wyeth are reported saying the estimates would be ""highly subjective, subject to huge swings as underlying assumptions change, and unlikely to provide financial statement users with meaningful or reliable information."

As always, any change to an accounting rule is political. And this is just another example of how political it gets. From the FASB's perspective, it's about making the market more transparent and providing investors with information that they need to know. But then, companies don't operate that way.