Is A Contingency-Fee Arrangement Between an Attorney General and a Private Law Firm Illegal?
The Issue in the California Supreme Court Appeal As in Rhode Island and numerous other states, public health advocates and public interest lawyers in California had been trying to figure out some way to sue the lead paint industry so as to provide funds to clean up lead paint from old homes. Instead of the whole state suing, as occurred in Rhode Island, in California a suit was brought by a group of large cities, including Oakland and Los Angeles. As in Rhode Island, the city attorneys were worried that their budgets were not large enough to produce the kind of state-of-the art lawyering that is required in a big mass tort case. So, as in Rhode Island, the city attorneys farmed the litigation out to certain well-known plaintiffs’ firms that had the expertise and the funds to prosecute the suit properly. The city attorneys offered the firms a contingent fee arrangement: a piece of the recovery if they won, and nothing at all if they lost. However, the trial judge in the case short-circu
