Here’s the headline no one in Kentucky wants to talk about: Report Details The Ties That Bind AGs, Trial Lawyers

Here’s a taste of the story:

A new report by the Manhattan Institute details the close financial ties between trial lawyers and state attorneys general, in what the author calls a “questionable bargain between the trial bar and the states’ top law-enforcement officers.” The report, Trial Lawyers Inc.: Attorneys General shows how AGs like Mississippi’s Jim Hood raise thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from lawyers whom they then appoint to represent the state in lawsuits that bring them millions of dollars in fees.

It’s an old story, of course. I wrote about how the AGs’ professional association, the National Association of Attorneys General, reaped more than $100 million from the tobacco settlement that is still throwing off $500 million a year in fees to the politically-connected lawyers who negotiated it.

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[T]here’s a problem when elected AGs hand over to their contributors cases that are often slam-dunk sources of fee awards. Those awards diminish the amount of money available to pay the state, but also might come from cases the government otherwise wouldn’t file, for good reason.

Click here to read the entire story from Forbes.

While the story itself doesn’t mention Jack Conway, the big ass report called Trial Lawyers Inc.: Attorneys General – A Report On The Alliance Between State AGs And The Plaintiff’s Bar 2011 (Warning: External PDF Link) certainly does.

From page nine:

The Alabama litigation, which is similar to that initiated by Kentucky attorney general Jack Conway and others, alleges that pharmaceutical companies have been “gouging” the state by recommending “average wholesale prices” (AWP) to pharmacists, which, the state argued, inflated its Medicaid bills. Like the Zyprexa lawsuits that actually went to trial, the Alabama AWP lawsuits that did so have not ultimately fared well. After juries awarded verdicts of $215 million, $33 million, and $80.9 million against AstraZeneca, Novartis, and GlaxoSmithKline, respectively, the companies pressed their cases on appeal, and the Alabama Supreme Court threw out these awards in their entirety. According to the court, there was nothing preventing Alabama from negotiating its own pricing with the companies, and “[t]he State failed to produce substantial evidence that it reasonably relied on the misrepresentations and/or fraudulent suppression it alleged.”

Notwithstanding this rebuke, the private firms hired by Alabama stand to profit handsomely from the AWP litigation.Rather than risk trial, a number of the other companies that were sued decided to settle the case in 2008 for $35 million,with $8.7 million going to the law firms for fees and expenses; a subsequent settlement in 2009 with still more companies came to $89 million, with $12 million reserved for the private attorneys.

Now you see why we raised questions last month?

Or why the Marathon suit has gone absolutely nowhere?

Maybe why he never took steps to clean up the mess at Kentucky Retirement Systems?

Why he fails to finish investigations into absolute crooks?

Maybe why we think he’s got a huge conflict of interest when it comes to fundraising and his current for-profit college political stunt? Maybe why things smell so fishy that Indiana quickly disavowed?

Or why he doesn’t investigate scandals like this in state government?

Maybe those $100,000+ in big bank contributions were why he refused to switch his position on the mortgage fraud scandal until we called him out?

Money talks. Jack has used his position to reward friends and campaign donors. He’s the luckiest man alive this year because he doesn’t have an opponent capable of discussing his problems and the mainstream isn’t holding him accountable.