JACKSON - One interesting sideline to the Mississippi Supreme Court's nearly unanimous rejection of the unconstitutional and illegal diversion of $20 million a year to the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi was the revelation that Attorney General Jim Hood thinks outside counsel legal fees should be $150 per hour.
One hundred and fifty dollars per hour? Is that really what Hood believes the going rate should be for outside counsel hired by state officials? Seems so.
Too bad Hood didn't use that figure when he hired his longtime friend and largest campaign contributor Joey Langston of Booneville and another firm to split $14 million in legal fees in the $100 million MCI/WorldCom case. Langston ended up with about $7 million of those fees.
Too bad former Attorney General Mike Moore didn't use that figure back when he hired his longtime friend and largest campaign contributor Dickie Scruggs to handle the state's tobacco litigation that Moore used to create the Partnership diversion.
Scruggs and a hand-picked group of trial lawyers reportedly split more than $1.4 billion in legal fees from the state's tobacco litigation.
The state Supreme Court decision handed down last week declaring the Partnership's $20 million annual diversion unconstitutional included a citation by the court of Hood's establishment of the $150-per-hour rate for outside counsel legal fees. Read for yourself the recount of Justice George Carlson of Batesville:
"On January 27, 2005, (Gov.) Haley Barbour … sent a memorandum to (Attorney) General Hood seeking authority to hire outside counsel to pursue vacation of the order of December 22, 2000, '(s)ince (the attorney general's) office will not be representing us in this litigation.'
"Shortly thereafter, on February 1, 2005, State Treasurer Tate Reeves submitted a letter to General Hood requesting that the attorney general's office represent the 'Board of the Health Care Trust Fund' in order to recover 'any monies that are due and owing the Health Care Trust Fund.'
"Reeves received no relief from the attorney general's office concerning their requests, but Gov. Barbour received conditional authority from General Hood to hire outside counsel at the rate of $150 per hour 'assum(ing) that you have the funds in your budget for which you are authorized to expend legal fees in this matter'."
Apparently, when the governor or state treasurer of Mississippi want to hire outside counsel to represent them, the going rate is $150 per hour. But when the state's attorney general - at least when Moore or Hood hold that position - hires outside counsel, the going rate is a contingency fee negotiated by the attorney general with no oversight from anyone.
Using that logic, the outside counsel attorneys who represented Barbour and Reeves in the challenge to the Partnership's $20 million annual diversion should get substantially more than $150 per hour for their work - millions perhaps?
The state's leading trial attorneys dispute the notion that outside counsel hirings should be the subject of additional oversight.
"The outside counsel hiring process in this state is transparent now," Langston said recently. "Contracts are matters of public record. The results, fees, expenses, every component are already matters of public record. It's an empty political argument."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Larry Akey said : "My concern about the retention of contingency fee counsel by state attorneys general is that in too many states, the AGs will hire from their list of campaign contributors, setting up the appearance if not the reality of a quid pro quo."
Perhaps. Perhaps not. But there's a lot of difference between the huge fees Scruggs and Langston earned and the $150 per hour Hood authorized for Barbour's lawyers.
