Republican Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is pushing for legislative limits on outside counsel legal fees for lawyers who contract with his office to represent the state in lawsuits.
McCollum told Legal Newsline.com — a pro-business Web site owned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that monitors the legal system — that he was backing outside counsel legal fee limits out of concern for public perceptions of so-called “pay-to-play” politics.
“Scandal-fatigued Floridians have heard about far too many shady deals involving public officials,” McCollum said. “This legislation takes aim at one of the most egregious forms of public corruption — pay-to-play politics.”
Campaign cash
To be sure, McCollum is also pushing the issue because he’s running for governor of Florida and legal system reform remains a viable issue in that state.
The outside counsel issue remains contentious in Mississippi as well. The state’s most recent high-profile outside counsel case was settled this week when Attorney General Jim Hood announced the state’s $18.5 million settlement of litigation with drug company Eli Lilly over the drug Zyprexa — which allegedly marketed the drug for “off-label” purposes and because the drug caused side effects like diabetes and hypertension.
The Houston, Texas law firm of Bailey Perrin Bailey — which donated $75,000 in campaign contributions to Hood — and a Mississippi firm will earn $3.7 million in outside counsel legal fees from the Zyprexa settlement.
Business as usual
Hood has battled any attempts to bring accountability to the award of outside counsel legal contracts. Hood contends that such contracts actually represent a savings to the taxpayers, but it’s difficult for watchdog groups to ignore the fact that such contracts have a way of ending up in the hands of large campaign contributors to Hood as they did some of his predecessors in that office.
The outside counsel fight has been ongoing in Mississippi since the late Gov. Kirk Fordice and former Attorney General Mike Moore battled over Mississippi's $4.1 billion tobacco settlement in the 1990s.
Current Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, while serving as state auditor in 2006, filed suit to get $14 million in legal fees from the state’s MCI-Worldcom lawsuit back — claiming the legal fees belonged to the state and must under law be appropriated by the Legislature. Current Republican State Auditor Stacy Pickering carried on the Bryant lawsuit.
As in Florida, the outside counsel issue isn’t going away. Do I think Jim Hood is selling his integrity for campaign contributions? No, I really don’t. It’s not his style. That’s not his track record.
But as in other states, there are ways to bring far more uniformity, transparency and openness to the outside counsel process and Mississippi should adopt such policies.
Contact Perspective Editor Sid Salter at (601) 961-7084 or e-mail ssalter@clarionledger.com. Visit his blog at clarionledger.com. His talk radio show, On Deadline with Sid Salter, is broadcast on the SuperTalk Mississippi network.
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Florida may limit fees for outside counselors
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