Soaring legal costs raising concerns in Livingston BY HEIDI R. KINCHEN hkinchen@theadvocate November 14, 2013 Livingston Parish government drained what it had budgeted for legal fees by late summer and kept on spending, records show, piling up bills more than 35 percent above budget with two months remaining in the year. On Thursday, the Parish Council will consider increasing one attorney’s spending cap. And later this month, the council is scheduled to adopt a budget amendment increasing the overall legal fees budget by 64 percent. The budget amendment, if approved, would allow the parish to spend 50 percent more on attorneys than it did in 2011, when more than half of the parish’s $242,000 in legal fees went toward fighting the Federal Emergency Management Agency for reimbursement of Hurricane Gustav-related cleanup costs. Some Parish Council members blame the skyrocketing costs on changes in the parish legal adviser’s fee structure. Other officials point to the council’s assignment of three highly contentious legal disputes to an outside attorney who charges higher hourly rates. The parish budgeted $261,031 for legal expenses in 2013, but bills to-date total $355,211, according to figures provided by the parish’s finance director. Parish legal adviser Christopher Moody accounts for the largest share of the bills thus far. Moody, also a private attorney in Hammond, has billed the parish $209,739 for work performed through October on some two dozen lawsuits and an equal number of legal issues, attendance at Parish Council meetings and other work. Moody bills at a rate of $175 per hour on lawsuits and complex legal issues, plus a $4,000 monthly fee for day-to-day legal advising. His bills have totaled $458,307 since he began working for the parish in January 2012. Moody’s predecessor, Denham Springs attorney Blayne Honeycutt, was paid a salary of about $42,000 per year for roughly the same services. Both were appointed by 21st Judicial District Attorney Scott Perrilloux. The Livingston Parish Home Rule Charter says the district attorney “shall serve as legal adviser,” but in practice, Perrilloux has appointed someone to the position. Some council members now question whether Perrilloux has the authority to hire out the job, especially at an hourly rate. Councilman Chance Parent, who chairs the council’s Finance Committee, said that’s “like giving the DA a checkbook to the entire parish and saying, ‘spend it how you want.’ … He doesn’t have any control over the parish budget and yet he’s the one setting our attorney’s fees.” Perrilloux said the charter gives him the responsibility, and therefore the authority, to provide legal representation for the parish government as he sees fit. “I don’t see it to be any different than any other decisions I make about the operations of the District Attorney’s Office, for which parish government is legally responsible for paying those expenses,” Perrilloux said. With increases in litigation and governmental in-fighting in recent years, moving to an hourly rate of pay was the best way to get an experienced attorney to sign on for the job, he said. “If they want to cut back on legal expenses, they should avoid getting in lawsuits,” Perrilloux said. Perrilloux said the council also contributes to the rising costs by hiring outside attorneys at higher hourly rates than the legal adviser charges. Attorney Richard F. Zimmerman Jr., of Kantrow Spaht Weaver & Blitzer in Baton Rouge, is paid $300 per hour plus expenses to represent the parish in two lawsuits against engineering firm Alvin Fairburn & Associates and in the dispute over flooding problems on Eden Church Road, where Fairburn engineers designed a resurfacing project in 2012. The council hired Zimmerman after Moody withdrew from the cases in late April. Zimmerman has billed the parish $59,420 for work done in May through September, including nearly $30,000 on the Eden Church Road issue alone. The council had given Zimmerman a cap of $25,000 for expenses on that issue, but will consider increasing that cap Thursday. The council also approved on Oct. 24 spending another $10,000 for Zimmerman to hire an engineering expert. Parent acknowledged Zimmerman’s mounting legal bills, but said the expenses are warranted. “The complexity of the cases is what causes the elevated numbers,” Parent said. “There is a lot more discovery involved, expert costs and other things that you just don’t have in those standard trip-and-fall or jail lawsuits a parish typically faces.” Parish President Layton Ricks said hiring more expensive outside counsel and increasing an attorney’s cap make budgeting more difficult. “You budget the best you can based on the experience you have with last year’s expenses,” Ricks said. theadvocate/home/7411591-125/soaring-legal-costs-raising-concerns
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 15:30:25 +0000
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