Pay-To-Play In Pennsylvania (And Elsewhere)
April 17, 2009
The Wall Street Journal lifts the rock on a sleazy “pay-to-play” racket involving Houston plaintiffs lawyer F. Kenneth Bailey and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. In 2006, Bailey made “repeated donations” to Gov. Rendell’s re-election campaign – and a few months later got a “no-bid, contingency fee contract to sue Janssen Pharmaceuticals on the state’s behalf.”
It gets worse. Bailey had already been turned away by Pennsylvania’s Attorney General after offering to file suit against Janssen. Gov. Rendell overruled his AG – for a major campaign donor.
It gets worse. Bailey has filed similar suits, representing the states of Mississippi, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Arkansas. According to the Journal, Bailey’s firm contributed $75,000 to Mississippi AG Jim Hood; $50,000 to New Mexico AG Gary King; $20,000 to a PAC that ran ads for Louisiana AG Buddy Caldwell; and $60,000 to the Arkansas Democratic Party. Bailey also donated $85,000 to the Democratic Attorney Generals Association, which turned around and gave money to AGs Hood and King.
“It’s some racket,” the Journal writes:
“The plaintiffs attorneys come up with novel legal theories under which to sue companies or entire industries. They then solicit state AGs (or cash-hungry Governors like Mr. Rendell) to retain them to bring cases on behalf of the government on a contingency-fee basis.
“The biggest losers here are the cause of justice and the principle of prosecutorial neutrality. When outside lawyers are hired to do the government’s business, and then given a financial stake in the outcome, it creates irreconcilable conflicts of interest. The state delegates key decisions – about whether and whom to sue, what legal theory to pursue, whether to settle and what remedy to propose – to private lawyers motivated by profit rather than the public interest.”