State AG/Plaintiff Firm Partnerships Pilloried In Times Investigation

The New York Times follows up its recent exposé of state attorneys general who take money from lobbyists and industry and then work to thwart government regulations disfavored by the donors. In this installment, the article addresses a scenario with some similarities but from the other side of the spectrum, with AGs allied with trial lawyers who in some cases are campaign contributors. The trial lawyers typically work with the AGs on class action lawsuits for a percentage of the victory proceeds. Like the players in the earlier article, participants on both sides of this arrangement are by and large unapologetic. “There is not a bit of shame about anything we do here,” said Linda Singer, a former attorney general now with the plaintiff firm Cohen Milstein. She has worked in partnership with attorneys general on a number of matters, including an investigation of credit rating agencies Experian and TransUnion and fraudulent lending in the mortgage industry. One of her sometime collaborationists, Attorney General Gary King of New Mexico, calls the arrangement “one of the only tools I have to level the playing field on behalf of consumers.”