The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to hear a legal challenge to a case involving Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell's hiring of a contingency fee law firm to sue a drug maker on behalf of the state.
As explained in an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal, the lawsuit concerns Bailey Perrin & Bailey, a Houston law firm tapped by the Rendell administration to prosecute Janssen Pharmaceuticals.
As the Journal notes, "it appears as if pay-to-sue politics was involved in the choice of Bailey Perrin."
"While F. Kenneth Bailey, the law firm's founding partner, was negotiating a potentially lucrative no-bid contingency fee contract with the Governor's office, he was also making political donations totaling more than $90,000 to Mr. Rendell's 2006 re-election campaign."
The court will consider a motion filed in January by Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, which questioned the appropriateness of the state hiring for-profit lawyers to sue on its behalf.
The Journal concludes: "A Pennsylvania ruling wouldn't be binding on courts in other states, but it would be noticed. An increasing number of state AGs and other public officials are offering contingency fee contracts to their political funders in the plaintiffs' bar, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's scrutiny of this dubious new litigation model is most welcome."
This isn't the first time the Journal has published an editorial blasting the unseemly state practice of hiring outside lawyers to sue private companies on a contingency fee basis -- and how the trial bar returns the favor with campaign donations to state office holders.
California has so far escaped from the potentially corruptive influence of such agreements.
The state's attorneys general and district attorneys have headed off plaintiff lawyer solicitations and conflicts of interest by following the guidance of long-time Justice Stanley Mosk and a unanimous court in the 1985 decision Clancy v. Superior Court, CJAC President John H. Sullivan noted in a news release.
In an amicus brief, CJAC has urged the California Supreme Court to preserve the case rule when it considers County of Santa Clara v. Superior Court. The case involves city attorneys and county counsels in a handful of jurisdictions hiring contingency fee lawyers to bring a public nuisance action against lead-based paint manufacturers.