In BP case, legal ties are topsy turvy: James Gill | NOLA.com

Louisiana has fielded a double team in the litigation over the BP oil spill, but nobody appears to have told Gov. Bobby Jindal and Attorney General Buddy Caldwell that they are supposed to be on the same side. Jindal generally loses no opportunity to ingratiate himself with the right wing, where the orthodox view is that greedy trial lawyers are a canker on the republic. In this case, however, according to Caldwell, Jindal has exceeded his legal authority in advancing their interests at the expense of Louisiana taxpayers.

One of the law firms that stand to rake in plenty of moolah as a result is Baron & Budd of Dallas, a generous contributor to Jindal's election campaign. Jindal has hired Burton LeBlanc, a Baron & Budd shareholder, as his special counsel in the BP case. Another Baron & Budd shareholder, Scott Summy, has a seat on the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee that federal Judge Carl Barbier appointed to manage the case and divvy up the damages.

Barbier, as a former trial lawyer himself and a Clinton appointee, is the kind of judge conservatives might be expected to regard as practically a subversive. But when Barbier ordered a portion of all awards held back to pay off the lawyers, over Caldwell's vehement objections, Jindal's lawyers up and declared the deal jake with them.

Since Louisiana will be entitled to billions in compensation, the lawyers will be pocketing vast sums from the taxpayers whose interests Jindal is supposed to protect. Under Barbier's order, private plaintiffs must reserve 6 percent of their awards for the lawyers, public bodies 4 percent.

Jindal's team not only approved the bonanza, but pledged that the state would not appeal any awards that Barbier might approve for the plaintiffs' committee. Jindal signed an agreement to that effect, and invited Caldwell to do so, but he refused.

Caldwell, who had been under the impression that he was the state's top legal officer, protested that Jindal had no authority to intervene. Throwing in the towel before the opening bell was not Caldwell's idea of a prudent strategy, either.

Caldwell now wants the appeals court to throw out Barbier's order holding back a portion of all settlements. His petition suggests that he is weary of being shunted aside while Louisiana's interests are hostage to the whims of Barbier, his pals on the plaintiffs' committee and a manifestly conflicted governor's office.

Caldwell complains that Barbier's orders include a "diatribe" against him because, for instance, of an alleged failure to co-operate with the plaintiffs' committee. Caldwell was under the impression that a lawyer has a right to disagree when his client's interests are at stake.

The plaintiffs' committee, in requesting the set-aside order, claimed that 300 lawyers had spent 230,000 hours on the BP case and incurred costs of $11.54 million. We need not fear that they will wind up uncompensated; lawyers can always be trusted to collect their fees.

The rationale for Barbier's order is that all oil-spill claimants should leave money on the table because they all benefit from the plaintiffs' committee's work even if they weren't clients. This is plainly specious. BP does not contest liability and has, indeed, put $20 billion in Kenneth Feinberg's hands for distribution to victims outside the court system. Jindal, according to his spokesman, does not think any of that money should be held back, but Barbier's order contains no exemption.

The plaintiffs' committee's goal, naturally, is to grab as much loot as possible, but it is hard to see why huge chunks of our money should be set aside for lawyers who do not represent Louisiana or even get along with the man who was elected to do so. Louisiana stands to lose plenty from the deal; that 4 percent escrowed for the lawyers' benefit is urgently needed to repair the colossal environmental damage caused by the spill.

A united front would come in handy at this stage, but it is plain that Caldwell regards Jindal as treacherous and interfering, and that he bitterly resents Barbier for treating him like dirt while bestowing "repeated lavish praise" on the plaintiffs' steering committee.

So our allegedly rock-ribbed governor takes up for the trial attorneys, while the attorney general is against them. The oil spill seems to have turned the entire state topsy turvy.

James Gill is a columnist for The Times-Picayune. He can be reached at jgill@timespicayune.com.

Source: http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/01/in_bp_case_legal_ties_are_tops.html

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