Cash Bar - How trial lawyers bankroll the Democratic party

In Jefferson County, Miss., where only half of the jury pool has graduated from high school, local pundits have called the courthouse "the center for the redistribution of wealth." Last year, plaintiffs (most of them in huge class-action cases) suing in this rural county outnumbered its 9,750 residents. In 1999, 178 lawsuits were filed there; in 2000, another 629 were filed. When five plaintiffs won a jury verdict of $150 million in compensatory damages against the makers of the diet drug fen-phen, the manufacturer settled the case-for those five and 800 others, including 500 from out of state-for $400 million. The national implications of Mississippi's long-arm jurisdiction over defendants and extravagant verdicts for plaintiffs are clear. A New Jersey corporation is currently defending asbestos litigation in Mississippi against 403 plaintiffs, half of whom are from Texas. Another asbestos case, settled two years ago, indicates that Mississippi plaintiffs are favored by the locals: Each of the 246 Mississippi plaintiffs received $263,000, while the 2,645 plaintiffs from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, with equal injuries, were each awarded $14,000.

The billions of dollars in fees from the national tobacco settlement might well be matched in further tobacco litigation, in which lawyers can be expected to enjoy their customary 25 percent of any recovery. In Jefferson County alone, an asbestos/tobacco case seeking $10.2 billion in damages is pending, along with a $5 billion case claiming that tobacco companies' advertising targeted blacks.

Florida is home to a landmark class-action case on behalf of somewhere between 300,000 and 700,000 smokers, seeking $145 billion. In the state's previous tobacco class action, the plaintiffs' lawyer was first in the class when it came to compensation. In that litigation, the plaintiffs themselves-flight attendants complaining about smoke-filled airplane cabins-received nothing from the $349 million settlement. Their two lawyers received $49 million, and the balance of the award was earmarked for research on secondhand smoke.

The conceit of trial lawyers is that they are fighting Goliaths in order to win verdicts to compensate the little guy, but their clients frequently share only the crumbs from their attorneys' bountiful tables. In one case involving faulty pipes, the lawyers for Alabama's plaintiffs were awarded $38 million, and those for Tennessee's plaintiffs got $45 million; all the homeowners got was an 8 percent rebate toward the purchase of new pipes. When a cellular-service provider settled a dispute over billing practices, class members were entitled to $15 vouchers, while their attorneys got $1.25 million. A recent Colorado case over long waits for phone service resulted in a settlement providing an average of $60 for each class member-and $7.2 million for their counsel. In the 1994 settlement of the Bank of Boston case involving escrow accounts, attorneys' fees actually imposed a net cost on plaintiffs: The lawyers received $8.5 million, and each aggrieved customer's account was debited by $90 to pay the legal fees.