Posted by Phil Lee (216.250.238.73) on August 08, 2001 at 21:18:
October 19 -- Maryland's kingmaker. According to Peter Angelos, the state of Maryland owes him a cool billion dollars for representing it in the tobacco settlement, and it seems a distinct possibility that he'll get it. The state legislature has gestured toward cutting in half his contracted 25 percent contingency fee, but that move is uncertain to stand up in court. In the mean time, Angelos's refusal to recede from his fee means that tobacco booty which otherwise would flow into state coffers will sit in an escrow account over which he'll exert partial control until the state resolves his claim.
In a March 28 profile, Washington Post reporters Daniel LeDuc and Michael E. Ruane write that Angelos is "viewed by many political insiders as the most powerful private citizen in Maryland." Immensely wealthy from asbestos plaintiffs' work -- a 1997 National Law Journal list of influential lawyers (link now dead) describes him as "a perennial candidate for any list of the best-paid attorneys in the nation" -- he branched out to buy the beloved hometown Baltimore Orioles and to become one of the most munificent donors to Democrats nationally as well as in Maryland. He now sports his own private lobbyist; glove-close relations with the governor and labor leaders; and a host of statehouse connections, such as with the state senate president pro tem, who happens to be a lawyer at Angelos's firm.
Among the marks of his success has been the ability to steer "Angelos bills" through each year's legislature whose effect is to enable him to extract more money from the defendants he sues. When a state appellate court ruled to limit damages on some of his asbestos cases earlier this year, for example, the Post reports, Angelos personally drafted a bill overturning the opinion and had two of his allies in Annapolis introduce it. (Those allies happened to be the Senate finance committee chairman and the House majority leader.) The bill reinstated higher damages for asbestos cases and for those cases only -- most of which happen to be under Angelos's control in the state. "Every time, it's a bill that lines Peter Angelos's pocket," grumbles House Minority Whip Robert Flanagan (R-Howard). In the most remarkable episode, Maryland lawmakers (like Florida's) agreed to change the rules retroactively to extinguish tobacco company legal defenses. We'll all be living with that precedent for a long time: once legislators get a taste of the power to declare their opponents' actions unlawful after the fact, it's unlikely tobacco companies will be the last target. For his part, Angelos presents his statehouse efforts as essentially conservative and restorative: "The legislation I introduce is meant to reinstitute the litigation rights our citizens once had," he told the Post of this year's asbestos bill.
Angelos's legislator-allies say the bills should be seen not as special interest legislation benefiting one person, but as a boon to an entire sector of the Maryland economy, which is what the lawyer's far-flung operations have come to be. "Peter Angelos in and of himself is a major economic interest in the state," explains one enthusiastic ally, House Majority Leader John Hurson (D-Montgomery). "His empire has grown so large, his benevolence so vast, they say, that to help Angelos is to help the whole state." Daniel LeDuc and Michael E. Ruane, "Orioles Owner Masters Political Clout", Washington Post, March 28; Daniel LeDuc, "Angelos, Md. Feud Over Tobacco Fee", Washington Post, Oct. 15 (link now dead).