CHALMETTE, La. – New St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis wasted little time making waves, signing a contract with a controversial plaintiffs' law firm whose partners made the largest contributions to his election campaign.
The contract directs a team of outside lawyers led by Baton Rouge-based Talbot, Carmouche and Marcello, the leading firm hired by landowners against oil companies, to represent the parish in potential claims for coastal damage and land loss, dating back decades.
Three partners in the Carmouche firm -- Donald Carmouche, John Carmouche and Victor Marcello – each gave maximum $5,000 donations to McInnis' parish presidential campaign last year.
"For three out-of-town lawyers to dump $15,000 into a local parish president's race is highly unusual," said Melissa Landry of Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch, a tort-reform advocacy group. "The size and the magnitude of these contributions raise some red flags."
McInnis said the Carmouche firm is recognized as the best firm for so-called "legacy lawsuits" against oil and gas companies and he supported their hiring before they ever gave to his campaign.
"I received many donations from friends who are attorneys who would like to have this lawsuit, but they're not qualified," he told WWL-TV in an interview Wednesday. "This firm is."
But the Carmouche firm is also highly controversial for pouring thousands of dollars into judicial races in jurisdictions where it has big legacy or coastal cases. A WWL-TV investigation in 2013 exposed how Carmouche and his political action committee almost single-handedly financed Jeff Hughes election to the Louisiana Supreme Court. Now, in an unprecedented move, Hughes is suing his fellow justices for forcing him to be recused from all cases involving Carmouche.
That's why St. Bernard Parish Councilman Nathan Gorbaty said he wants a different law firm, New Orleans-based Sher, Garner, Cahill, Richter, Klein & Hilbert, to represent the parish. He said he's afraid Carmouche would be a liability if a potential St. Bernard lawsuit ever went to the state Supreme Court.
But Sher Garner attorney Jim Garner isn't just any alternative to Carmouche. Garner was the lawyer for U.S. Sen. David Vitter who fought to remove an anti-Vitter ad financed by Carmouche's PAC, which spent nearly $2 million to help defeat Vitter.
Garner has represented four business landowners in legacy cases, and he did defend Texas Brine Co., when it was sued by landowners for allegedly causing the Bayou Corne sinkhole that forced the evacuation of 300 homes.
Garner did sue an oil company in that case, as Texas Brine claimed Occidental Petroleum Corp. caused the sinkhole with its drilling methods.
Meanwhile, back in St. Bernard Parish, there's still a question of whether the contract McInnis signed with Carmouche is valid.
McInnis signed the contract last week, two years after he and three others voted as parish council members to authorize it. In December 2013, the council directed McInnis' predecessor, Dave Peralta, to sign the contract for legal services, but Peralta never did, saying he didn't think a lawsuit against the oil and gas industry was good for the parish.
The original council ordinance starts by authorizing Peralta, by name, to hire the Carmouche team. Later in the same ordinance, it says simply "the Parish President is hereby authorized" to sign the contract. McInnis said he got a legal opinion stating that he is authorized to sign it as parish president, even though he was also the deciding vote on the council too.
"It doesn't pass the smell test," Landry said.
It may be telling that the council was scheduled Tuesday night to revoke the authority the previous council had granted to Peralta, so they could expressly give the same authority to McInnis to sign a contract for those legal services. They were supposed to do that even though McInnis had already signed the contract left unsigned by Peralta.
But when WWL-TV called McInnis on Tuesday morning and asked him about it, the new president spoke to the sponsor of the new ordinance, Gorbaty. Within an hour, they had decided to table those motions and to cancel a scheduled closed-door session with the outside attorneys.
"The council decided to sit back, take a deep breath," McInnis said Wedneseday. "They thought I was going to file a lawsuit on our behalf. That was not going to happen. I think some of them thought it was going to cost us money as we go through this process. It is not."
And that raises yet another question: Could the parish be on the hook for legal fees at some point? The contract says the lawyers get paid fees set by the court if there is a settlement or if the parish wins at trial, and the payments would come from the defendant oil companies, not the parish. But that is dubious. Landry has long argued that the defendants in such cases do reduce their payments to the plaintiffs to accommodate a 20-percent "contingency fee" tacked on by the court.
There is also a provision in the contract under which the attorneys can petition the court for costs they incurred putting the case together if the parish ends up firing them before the case is over. It says they won't make a claim to the parish directly, but Landry wonders if that would really protect the parish from being forced to pay by the court.
The St. Bernard contract goes to great lengths to say it is not a "contingency fee" arrangement, which would require approval from the state Attorney General to proceed.
There are also concerns about whether the contract McInnis signed allows Carmouche and his team to go ahead right now and file a lawsuit against oil and gas companies. McInnis insists that the council will get to vote again before any legal action is taken.
"The language in the contract is kind of a gray area, but I gave my commitment to the council that without council support I will not be filing a lawsuit," McInnis said.
The contract contemplates a coastal damages lawsuit similar to "legacy lawsuits" filed by private landowners against oil and gas companies. Carmouche represents by far the most landowners in those cases, and the Louisiana Legislature has tried for over a decade to curtail them with little success.
McInnis has no such qualms.
"Let me tell you, when a citizen gets a ticket in the street, they're asked to pay a fine," he said. "Well, these guys (oil companies) were (figuratively) speeding in our marsh-ways back in the ‘70s and there's state law that says those guys need to pay for their ticket, and we're going to try to make them pay for their ticket."
The St. Bernard contract is with the same legal team – the Carmouche firm joined by Jefferson-based Connick and Connick and Plaquemines-based Cossich, Sumich, Parisola & Taylor -- that represented Plaquemines Parish in its coastal lawsuit, which a new parish council voted to withdraw in November.
