It’s round two for Republican state Auditor Stacy Pickering and Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood in a fight over the constitutionality of a law that allows Hood to hire private lawyers to represent Mississippi in lawsuits.
The Mississippi Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments Aug. 3 in a second lawsuit over the fees. In this one, Pickering is appealing a judge’s decision last year upholding $10 million in fees paid to lawyers for handling a state lawsuit against computer software manufacturer Microsoft. Microsoft is not a party to Pickering’s lawsuit.
Hinds County Chancellor Denise Owens last April ruled against Pickering.
Microsoft reached a $100 million settlement with the state of Mississippi in 2009. It agreed to pay $10 million to private lawyers hired by the attorney general’s office to handle the case.
Pickering sued, arguing the fees should be paid with money appropriated by the Legislature.
Owens ruled that state law allows the attorney general to hire outside lawyers. Those lawyers received no funds from the state, Owens said, and the legal fees were separate from the settlement.
Hood said this week that he didn’t want to comment until after the Supreme Court ruling. Hood has said he enters into such contracts with private attorneys when his office does not have the expertise, resources or manpower to pursue a case. He said he awards such contracts to the attorney who presents the case to him.
Pickering was not immediately available for comment.
Earlier this month, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in a similar case involving a group of lawyers awarded $14 million for their work to collect more than $100 million from telecommunications giant MCI.
In both cases, Pickering is attacking a state law that allows the attorney general to hire lawyers from outside his office to handle legal cases.
In the MCI case, Hinds County Circuit Judge Winston Kidd in 2010 upheld fees paid to two attorneys, reaching the same conclusion as did Owens in the Microsoft case.
Pickering contended the money the attorneys received for pursuing the MCI case on behalf of the state is public funds and only can be appropriated by the Legislature.
The lawsuit over the legal fees was originally filed by Phil Bryant, a Republican who’s now lieutenant governor and is running for governor. Pickering picked up the fight after succeeding Bryant as state auditor in 2008.
Joey Langston and Timothy Balducci in 2005 negotiated the legal fees separate from a settlement with MCI in a lawsuit they filed on behalf of the state. They were later disbarred after pleading guilty in an unrelated judicial bribery investigation.
The political feud over using private attorneys to represent the state in high-profile cases is nothing new. During the 1990s, then-Attorney General Mike Moore, a Democrat, used several private attorneys, including his law school friend Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, to sue tobacco companies to recover the costs of treating sick smokers.
Hood hired Langston and Balducci to try to recoup unpaid taxes and interest stemming from the collapse of Clinton-based WorldCom, which emerged from bankruptcy as MCI in 2004 after a massive accounting fraud. In 2005, MCI agreed to pay the state $100 million and hand over real estate valued at several million.
Topics Lawsuits Mississippi
Was this article valuable?
Here are more articles you may enjoy.
Carnival Puts Miami Headquarters Up for Sale as Florida Real Estate Soars 
Harvard Study Again Stirs the Pot on Demotech Ratings of Florida Carriers 
Undercover St. Louis Officer Beaten by Colleagues Awarded $23.5M 
Cargo Owners in Baltimore Disaster Face ‘General Average’ Loss Sharing, MSC Says 
