Adam Liptak, the national legal correspondent of The New York Times, writes the “Sidebar” column for the newspaper. The column covers and considers developments in the law. Liptak weighs in on Drew Edmondson and the "poultrygate" scandal the Oklahoma press refuses to cover.
When Oklahoma’s attorney general decided to sue about a dozen poultry companies, saying they had polluted the state’s waterways with chicken manure, he did not turn to lawyers on his staff or hire an outside law firm that would bill in the usual way, by the hour.
Instead, Attorney General W. A. Drew Edmondson went into business with three plaintiffs’ firms, agreeing to pay them as much as half of any money they recovered from the poultry companies.
In courts around the nation, in cases involving tobacco, lead paint and guns, state attorneys general have been outsourcing government power to private lawyers. Business groups hate the development, in part because they would rather not litigate against sophisticated plaintiffs’ lawyers on a level legal playing field.
But the business groups make broader points as well.
“When someone who is exercising the state’s power stands to gain from that, it violates due process,” said Jay T. Jorgensen, a lawyer for one of the chicken companies. “If you got pulled over by a cop and the cop made more money if he gave you a ticket and less if he didn’t, no one would think that was fair.”
Read more... Labels: AG, Drew Edmondson
Posted at 7/10/2007 11:11:00 AM
