Here's the report:
Some county governments have found that when it comes to suing corporations over polluted property, hiring a private law firm on a contingency fee basis is the way to go.
But against the backdrop of a multi-billion dollar dioxin case in Harris County, there’s an effort to outlaw those arrangements in pollution lawsuits. The House Committee on Environmental Regulation has scheduled a hearing today on a bill that would ban counties from using private firms, HB 3119.
. . . Harris County, which was the focus of the conservative group’s report, says contingency fee arranagements are vital to its efforts to litigate pollution cases.
“We don’t have money to go out and hire lawyers. You’re talking about, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of dollars that we would have to spend up front just to go to court. With the contingency fee, we don’t have to do that. We only pay if we win,” said Terrence O’Rourke, special assistant to the Office of the Harris County Attorney.
The issue is nothing new to the county. In a case before the Texas First Court of Appeals, attorneys for two corporations challenged Harris County’s right to hire contingency fee lawyers in a case involving a dioxin-contaminated site along the San Jacinto River. In the 1960s, waste from a paper mill was dumped into ponds. It’s now an EPA Superfund site. Signs in the area warn that fish are contaminated and should not be eaten.
Lawyers for the companies argued in court that the case could result in $2 billion to $3 billion in civil penalties with 25 percent going to the private lawyers, according to coverage of the hearing by Law360. The companies’ lawyers reportedly said that the contingency fee arrangement created a profit incentive that would be unfair to their side, denying them a neutral prosecution of the case.
The Office of the Harris County Attorney portrays the fee arrangements differently. The county argues that contingent fee contracts are reviewed and approved by the Texas Comptroller and are governed by state law that caps payments according to the amount of work performed.
And the county points out that the big corporations fighting the suits often use very experienced, highly-paid attorneys.
