Regulation through Litigation - Point of Law.com

Walter Olson writing in Point of Law in 2005 shows us the seeds that were sown, which are the sources of The Wilderness and its encroachment on legal civilization.

Publicity-seeking politicians and contingency-fee lawyers corrupt the law - Reason Online

Posted January 29, 2001 by James K. Glassman.  This posting takes a very opinionated and intense view of the use of contingency fee lawyers by States Attorneys General, as evidenced by the title.

Bush Bars Government from using Contingency Fee Lawyers - WSJ Law Blog

Posted May 17, 2007, this is a report of the President’s actions to stop the federal government from using contingency fee lawyers.

California Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Contingent Fee Public Nuisance Issue - Mass Tort Defense Blog

Sean P. Wajert of Dechert LLP provides a background discussion of the contingency fee issue in light of the California Supreme Court recently granting review of County of Santa Clara v. Superior Court (Atlantic Richfield), No. S163681 (Cal. S.Ct.) and also following the recent Rhode Island Supreme Court public nuisance law decision, State of Rhode Island v. Lead Industries Association, Inc., No. 2004-63-M.P. (R.I. July 1, 2008).  Read More »

The Illegality of Contingency-Fee Arrangements When Prosecuting Public Natural Resource Damage Claims and the Need for Legislative Reform - Social Science Research Network

Julie E. Steiner, St. John’s University School of Law, presents an abstract of her paper in which she concludes that using the contingency fee structure to bring public natural resource damage (NRD) claims violate the express language of, and legislative intent underlying, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA).  Read More »

Contingency Fees and Government Lawyers - Drug and Device Law Blog

Posted by Jim Beck, a Counsel resident in the Philadelphia office of Dechert LLP, and Mark Herrmann, a partner resident in the Chicago office of Jones Day.

This posting has many references about the perils of governments using private legal counsel on a contingency fee basis.  The references include a California court decision (County of Santa Clara v. Atlantic Richfiled Co.) prohibiting municipal governments for such practices as well as many other references and articles and blogs dealing with the question of government use of private counsel on a contingency fee basis, including an earlier post by the authors on this issue.  Read More »

Contingency Fee Counsel for Public Nuisance Lawsuits Comes at the Expense of the Taxpayers - from Nuisance Law Blog

Lisa Perrochet asks "One has to wonder whether government attorneys with no personal stake in driving the litigation forward would have felt that, on balance, exposing the taxpayers by advancing such a tenuous public nuisance theory was the right thing to do for the public those attorneys represent."