Was AG Wilson’s $75M payment to private attorneys lawful? Court arguments on the horizon
Was a $75 million legal fee awarded by Attorney General Alan Wilson to his old law firm and other private attorneys excessive given their role in settling a lawsuit against the federal government over nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site?
And just what did those attorneys do to earn that amount? After all, some of South Carolina’s top politicians were also involved in settling the dispute.
Those and other questions were originally set to be aired Monday morning in a virtual hearing before state Judge Clifton Newman; however, the hearing was delayed Monday due to a conflict with the judge. It was not immediately clear when a hearing would be rescheduled.
The eventual hearing will be part of a lawsuit that challenges the payment.
The hearing almost didn’t happen.
In September 2020, Columbia attorney John Crangle and the S.C. Public Interest Foundation sued Wilson, arguing that the $75 million fee was unreasonable and Wilson had “no need to hire private counsel to address a relatively straightforward issue that government leaders ultimately negotiated.”
A month earlier, Wilson, joined by former President Donald Trump’s energy secretary, Dan Brouillette, held a State House press conference to announce the federal government would pay South Carolina $600 million for the government’s years-long failure to remove bomb-grade plutonium from the Savannah River nuclear weapons complex in Aiken, Barnwell and Allendale counties. The state had been stuck with the deadly material for years after a major government construction project unraveled.
Wilson’s agreement required the Department of Energy to remove nearly 10 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium from SRS over the next 15 years.
The agreement also carved out $75 million in fees for attorneys from two Columbia law firms. Wilson said that amount was derived from a contingency fee formula based on the amount recovered.
The firms were Willoughby & Hoefer, and Davidson, Wren & DeMasters. Before becoming attorney general, Wilson worked for Willoughby & Hoefer.
Gov. Henry McMaster publicly questioned giving $75 million of the $600 million Wilson got for the state to private attorneys. McMaster also said the 15-year timeline for getting rid of the nuclear waste was unduly long. McMaster and Wilson are both Republicans.
The lawsuit by Crangle and the Public Interest Foundation went forward in state court, where Judge Kirk Griffin and now-retired Judge Alison Lee, in two separate rulings, tossed the case. They ruled that Crangle and the foundation lacked “standing.” A party to a lawsuit has “standing” if they are personally affected by the matter.
Crangle and the foundation then appealed to the S.C. Supreme Court, which took up the case.
In September 2022, the high court unanimously reversed the rulings by Griffin and Lee and sent the case back to circuit court.
Crangle and the foundation qualified for “standing” because they were advocating a matter of significant public interest on behalf of the public, a matter that just might come up again, justices ruled.
“This issue will inevitably arise again in the future because Wilson has seven other litigation retention agreements with private attorneys,” justices wrote.
Justices noted they were not commenting on the case’s merits.
The $75 million has already been transferred to the law firms.
Wilson authorized giving the money to the law firms within days of the settlement.
Among other goals, Crangle’s lawsuit seeks to have the courts declare that Wilson’s payment of $75 million in public money to private attorneys violated the state constitution. The lawsuit seeks to have the full $600 million given to the state.
