West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse is blasting the millions of dollars in attorneys fees from the state’s blockbuster opioid litigation.
“We hope the legislature will do a thorough review of these contracts and the fees being paid to avoid any such windfall for a handful of attorneys in the future,” stated Greg Thomas, spokesman for West Virginians Against Lawsuit Abuse and a political adviser closely associated with state Senate leaders.
West Virginia was hit hard by opioid addiction that resulted in the state experiencing one of the largest increases in overdose deaths in the country.
The state, along with nearly every county and city throughout West Virginia, filed lawsuits against entities they alleged to be responsible. The targets of the lawsuits included manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies that distributed and/or dispensed prescription opioids.
The results of the lawsuits brought in $940,386,000.
An appointed common benefit fund manager has made final recommendations about what lawyers representing state and local governments should receive.
The manager, retired judge Christopher Wilkes, has recommended that the attorney fee fund would amount to 15 percent of the $940 million total. So the attorney fee fund would wind up being $141 million.
Wilkes wrote that he “believes this amount strikes an appropriate and careful balance between the unparalleled complexities and high-risk involved in this litigation while ensuring that sufficient funds are available to address and abate the opioid crisis in our State.”
Two firms, national Motley Rice and local Webb Law Centre, which served as outside counsel to the state Attorney General, are in line for $41.65 million for representing the state as a whole. Wilkes’ recommendation specifically cites contingency fee percentages negotiated between the law firms and the Attorney General’s Office in reaching the total amount.
The firms are in line for even more than that because they also represented cities and counties, but they are subject to a cap in state code limiting their entire compensation to no more than $50 million.
Beyond that, the lead firms representing cities and counties are recommended for the biggest payouts from a pot of money representing shared legal work: $22.5 million to Fitzsimmons Law Firm of Wheeling and $20 million to Farrell Fuller of Huntington and Powell Majestro of Charleston. Those amounts are in addition to specific contingency fees the firms will get from representing local governments.
More West Virginia law firms will also be compensated significantly for their work on the mass opioid litigation.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same in West Virginia with respect to personal injury law firms cashing in big through outside counsel contracts with the Attorney General’s office. ‘$141 million in attorney’s fees’ is not a headline I expected to see in our state in 2023,” Thomas said.
In his statement, Thomas criticized the past practices of longtime Attorney General Darrell McGraw, a Democrat, while also criticizing current Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican.
“For years, former Attorney General Darrell McGraw doled out millions of dollars in contracts to his personal injury lawyer campaign contributors — a practice that didn’t stop with his successor. While the attorneys certainly did a lot of work, tens of millions of dollars going to several different personal injury law firms, including out-of-state firms, is excessive,” he stated.
Thomas continued, “McGraw may be gone, but the gravy train for the personal injury lawsuit industry is still running right through Attorney General Morrisey’s office.”
In a statement from the Attorney General’s Office, Morrisey pushed back on Thomas’s criticism.
“It’s absurd and flat-out asinine for an uninformed and conflicted individual to give his take on something he knows nothing or very little about,” Morrisey said. “Learn the facts before making any assumptions.”
The Attorney General’s statement described a concern from the beginning of the opioid litigation about how much settlement money would wind up going to attorneys. That statement maintained state officials negotiated down a contingency fee for outside counsel to 7.76 percent.
The framework laid out by Wilkes specifically cited the negotiated agreement between the Attorney General’s Office and the outside counsel firms to come up with the $41.65 million figure for representing the state.
For additional representation of county and city governments, those law firms were in line to earn more, a total that state law capped at no more than $50 million.
That second part, the additional money for representing local governments, is where Morrisey focused his comments.
“I am troubled by the aggregate amount of attorney fees that will be paid from the settlements, which includes cities and counties,” Morrisey stated.
“It was my hope that the people of West Virginia would benefit from the money we were able to save by negotiating for lower fees. Unfortunately, by awarding fees totaling 15% of the settlements, the full value of those negotiations will not be realized.”