BY ROBERT J. SMITH

Posted on Saturday, June 2, 2007, Arkansas Dmocrat Gazette

It’s improper for Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson to use private attorneys paid on contingency in a lawsuit against Arkansas poultry companies, two national organizations said in court papers filed Friday.

The U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Tort Reform Association filed friendof-the-court briefs in U. S. District Court in Tulsa.

“Seeking legal support from outside counsel is acceptable, but allowing private lawyers to litigate on behalf of the state is not,” said Robin Conrad, executive vice president of the National Chamber Litigation Center, an arm of the chamber of commerce. “Paying the private lawyers on a contingency rather than hourly basis would incentivize them to seek higher than warranted damages to pad their pockets.”

Victor Schwartz, the Washington-based tort-reform group’s general counsel, said it’s “unsound public policy” for state attorneys general to rely on help from private lawyers.

“Contingency-fee agreements were meant to increase access to courts for individuals without the resources to pay an hourly attorney fee; they were not meant for state governments,” the court filing shows.

Friday’s filing is the poultry companies’ latest effort to “call in their friends to help them pollute the legal waters,” Edmondson spokesman Charlie Price said.

“The argument that the state’s contract with the outside attorneys is somehow invalid is nothing more than misdirection,” Price said. “They want the court and the public to look at anything but what their pollution is doing to our water. If they would focus half the energy on waste management that they do on media spin, our watershed would be in much better condition.”

The private lawyers helping the Oklahoma attorney general’s office with the poultry lawsuit will receive one-third of any settlement or court award as their contingency fee, according to their contract with Edmondson’s office.

The contract stipulates that the contingency fee plus attorney’s expenses can’t exceed 50 percent of any money paid to the state by the sued companies.

Archie Schaffer, Tyson Food Inc. ’s senior vice president for external relations, said the Springdale-based company’s attorneys in Washington noted the U. S. Chamber of Commerce’s interest in other cases involving contingency-fee attorneys. The organization had filed other court briefs in similar cases, Schaffer said.

“They were eager to get involved,” Schaffer said.

Attorneys for Tyson, one of the eight poultry companies sued by Oklahoma in 2005 for polluting the Illinois River watershed with poultry litter, made a similar court filing in March. The watershed includes portions of Northwest Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma.

The company’s attorneys asked U. S. District Court in Tulsa in March to determine that it’s unconstitutional for any damages paid by the companies to be awarded to the private attorneys.

Edmondson’s office should be required to represent its own interests, the Tyson attorneys said. A hearing on that issue is set for June 14-15.

Edmondson sued Tyson and seven other poultry companies in June, accusing them of polluting the Illinois River watershed with poultry litter. The companies are Cargill Inc. of Minneapolis; Cobb-Vantress Inc. of Siloam Springs; George’s Inc. of Springdale; Peterson Farms Inc. of Decatur; Simmons Foods of Siloam Springs; Willow Brook Foods of Springfield, Mo.; and Cal-Maine Foods Inc. of Jackson, Miss.