CHARLESTON – A legal reform group is criticizing Attorney General Patrick Morrisey for his office’s use of outside counsel, saying personal injury lawyers are being paid “hundreds of millions of dollars from government lawsuits.”
West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse says AG payouts to law firms in government lawsuits have increased significantly since Morrisey, a Republican, took office in 2013.
Morrisey’s office disputes WV CALA’s attack, saying the office has “a history of lower outside counsel fees” and “negotiating and delivering for taxpayers.”
Thomas
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“For years, West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse criticized then-Attorney General Darrell McGraw, a Democrat, for his use of outside counsel to sue corporations on behalf of the state and force settlements that made his campaign contributing personal injury lawyer friends rich,” WV CALA Executive Director Greg Thomas told The West Virginia Record. “Personal injury law firms had received nearly $53 million from contingency fee contracts with the Patrick Morrisey Attorney General’s office before the $151 million in fees that were just awarded with the opioid litigation case.
“While Darrell McGraw gave out tens of millions of dollars to personal injury law firms, it pails in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars that Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has overseen being paid out.”
Morrisey’s office says “the numbers speak for themselves, and there can be no argument.” It also says Morrisey has been “a ferocious advocate for guarding taxpayers’ money and saving the state millions of dollars through lower outside counsel fees.”
The AG’s office says fees for outside attorneys under Morrisey have averaged 8.4 percent. Under McGraw, it says those fees ranged from 33 to 40 percent.
“It has always been my goal as Attorney General to be the best steward of taxpayers’ money,” Morrisey said. “I will continue to fight to get the best bang for our buck in West Virginia in all settlements and fee arrangements we negotiate.”
Morrisey’s office also says the outside counsel contingency fee for the opioid litigation was negotiated down to 7.76 percent, saying it was one of the lowest – if not the lowest – in the nation.
“Throughout 2022 and 2023, the Attorney General repeatedly objected to the fee levels sought by the counties and cities,” the office said in a press release. “Attorney General Morrisey submitted formal objections in early 2023 and even met with the commissioner of the Common Benefit Fund to urge him to pay less money to attorneys. The objection was to the 15 percent attorney’s fees adopted by the Mass Litigation Panel on the commissioner’s recommendation.”
The AG’s office press release also included a chart providing a comparison of cases he inherited from McGraw where Morrisey lowered the percentage of some fees and the fee percentage during his term.
“The numbers tell an amazing story about how aggressive the Attorney General has been to save taxpayers’ money,” the office says. “The chart makes it evident how the Attorney General’s aggressive stance of negotiating lower fees not only compares very favorably to his predecessor, but resulted in fee arrangements far less than envisioned under statute — a statute Attorney General Morrisey proposed. The Attorney General also is a strong advocate of a uniform fee schedule for the cities and counties — similar to the state’s.
“When Attorney General Morrisey entered office, he pursued a series of reforms designed to improve the quality and efficiencies of the post. Among the improvements he made include changing the process for hiring outside counsel, a move that dramatically increased transparency and saved the state nearly $47 million since he took office in 2013.”
Morrisey also notes his office had no control over the amount of attorneys fees paid to lawyers representing cities and counties in the opioid litigation. He repeatedly has said he pushed for lower fees to no avail.
On October 13, state Mass Litigation Panel judges awarded 15 percent of the state’s opioid settlement funds to attorneys from the West Virginia First Qualified Settlement Fund. Morrisey had fought for a rate about half of that.
“I’m deeply disappointed by the decision to award an egregious amount of attorneys’ fees in the opioid cases, especially after my office negotiated one of the lowest, if not the lowest, fee rates in the nation,” Morrisey said then. “We negotiated a fee rate of under 8 percent, whereas the court awarded the attorneys for the counties and cities a substantially higher number.
“While I have great respect for the court and the work they did in these cases, the court unfortunately rejected our request for lower attorneys’ fees for the counties and cities.”
Still, Thomas calls the numbers shocking.
“West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse highlighted the abuses of Darrell McGraw and his outside counsel hiring practices for years,” he said. “There is no way that we could have imagined that the situation would have become worse under Patrick Morrisey, but that is exactly what happened.
“Despite the fact that the Legislature passed legislation to bring transparency to the practice of hiring outside counsel, Patrick Morrisey’s office has refused to comply with the new law and has remarkably helped pay personal injury law firms hundreds of millions of dollars more than Darrell McGraw ever did.”
WV CALA issued a report of its own.
“Over the past decade, most of the AG reports lack the transparency required by West Virginia Code,” Thomas said. “Morrisey appointed outside counsel in several matters, but many AG reports fail to provide the attorneys' names or the attorney fees paid for such engagements, as is required under state law.
“In total, we have identified approximately 33 outside counsel representations that have either been reported, or should have been reported in accordance with W.Va. Code § 5-3-4 during Attorney General Morrisey’s tenure of 2013-2023.”
Thomas said WV CALA hopes lawmakers take action.
“We urge the members of the West Virginia Legislature to review our report and make another attempt to address this broken system of personal injury law firms using our state Attorney General’s office to make hundreds of millions of dollars,” Thomas said. “While Darrell McGraw and Patrick Morrisey may have gotten away with this abuse, we need to ensure that future Attorney Generals do not.”