State-sponsored lawsuits are trial bar’s new cash cow
America’s plaintiffs’ bar, which we at the Manhattan Institute have dubbed Trial Lawyers, Inc., has found a new cash cow in state-sponsored litigation parceled out by the nation’s state attorneys general.
Most state AGs are dependent on campaign cash — 43 of the 50 states elect their attorneys general — and they have increasingly turned to trial attorneys who profit handsomely by suing for the states.
The funder list for the Democratic Attorneys General Association, which has spent more than $6 million in each of the last two election cycles, reads like a who’s who for Trial Lawyers, Inc.
The biggest donors to DAGA have included securities class-action firms Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann and Labaton Sucharow & Rudoff, as well as, in the 2008 election cycle, the former law firms of Mississippians Dickie Scruggs and Joey Langston, who funneled hundreds of thousands to help re-elect their state’s attorney general, Jim Hood, before the two private attorneys were disbarred and imprisoned on federal charges stemming from an attempt to bribe a judge.
Washington Examiner
10/25/11
Magnolia Tribune
