The Truth Comes Out: Troy and Trial Lawyers

Finally, the media in Alabama is starting to cover Troy King's controversy surrounding trial lawyers. It has become an interesting battle in Alabama, with Skip Tucker of Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse sparring on a regular basis with AG King.

The general facts are probably familiar to most of you. Basically, a number of different pharmaceutical companies defrauded the Alabama Medicaid System. They are now being sued by a number of states, including Alabama, for damages. In order to handle the cases, AG King has farmed out the work to Hand Arendall, a Mobile firm, which then got Beasley Allen, a trial lawyer firm run by Jere Beasley. Those firms have gotten 14%, and Tucker wants the process opened to competitive bidding. Well, Troy King is not standing for that.

There are a series of problems with this issue, many of which have been chronicled on this blog before. First, in other states, Attorneys General have used this ability to award private contracts to reward political supporters. A story from Legal Newsline on October 2 noted South Carolina, but problems have also arisen in Georgia, West Virginia, and a number of other states. Second, if you're a conservative, you have to be a bit nervous that the process of hiring private attorneys for public work was developed by liberals; in fact, it was developed by ultra-liberal Eliot Spitzer of New York, who regularly used legal loopholes to harrangue private enterprise. It has also been criticized by conservative law professors and federal judge Bill Pryor. Third and finally, you have to worry that, quite simply, as Tucker suggests, Alabama could be getting a better deal through a fair, open, competitive bid.

So, whether you like the system of hiring private attorneys or dislike it, it's easy to argue that Alabama's system is not working the right way. Now, the Legal Newsline story suggests that Troy King has received no contributions from Beasley Allen or Hand Arendall. As a point of fact, that may well be correct.

However, these facts simply do not tell you the whole story, and that story is that trial lawyers regularly give to PACs, which then transfer their money around and give that money eventually to candidates. Alabama has extremely backward PAC laws, which have regularly drawn criticism from outside groups and conscientous legislators. This is done to muddy the waters in terms of tracking candidate contributions. Jere Beasley told the Birmingham News in 2006 that trial lawyers use this process because candidates "think the stigma of a trial lawyer will hurt them." According to Birmingham News data from 2006, King did receive some pretty big contributions from PACs which then received lots of their money from Beasley Allen. For instance, King received funding from PACs run by lobbyist Rudy Davidson totalling over $32,500. Well, Rudy Davidson's PACs got a lot of money from lawyer interests, including $193,625 from the Trial Trust PAC representing trial lawyers and $75,000 from Beasley Allen itself. So, the money trail is actually more complex than the story suggests.

The sad fact is that we wouldn't be discussing this if Alabama did two things. We should (a) resolve the private attorneys issue, either ending the hiring altogether or following Tucker's recommendations (probably the smartest) and opening the process to competitive bid and outside scrutiny. We should (b) then allow for greater transparency by ending all the PAC-PAC cloudiness and offering the light of day. If our candidates are being bankrolled by trial lawyers, or any special interest for that matter, we have a right as voters to know.

Until that time, motives will always be cloudy, and with someone having as questionable a past as Troy King, it's not entirely unfair to suspect the worst.