Flash Point - March 30, 2008 - Randy Terrill

The Flash Point gang talk with Representative Randy Terrell and State Senator Harry "Cry Baby" Coates about Terrell's initiative to make English the official language in Oklahoma.

Flash Point - March 23, 2008 - Sally Kern

Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern created Internet controversy when she said that homosexuality was "the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam."

Links to Okla. AG land lawyers contingency prize: Big Chicken

Links to Okla. AG land lawyers
contingency prize: Big Chicken

by Rob Luke

Edmondson's 2005 suit

Scoring a contingency fee contract from Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson to take on the poultry industry's biggest names in a pollution lawsuit takes connections.

Fortunately for the Tulsa-based law firm Riggs, Abney, Neal, Turpen, Orbison & Lewis (Riggs Abney), they have AG connections in spades.

Riggs Abney was the first major law firm to come on board what's become known as Democrat AG Edmondson's Big Chicken suit. Edmondson filed a lawsuit in June 2005 against chicken farms run by 14 major producers - including Tyson Foods and Cargill - in upstream Arkansas claiming pollution of Oklahoma's waterways and seeking unspecified damages.

Since then, Texas environmental law specialists Miller Keffer, LLP and controversial big-name plaintiffs' litigators Motley Rice have joined Edmondson's crew - also on contingency, which could mean up to one-third of the final payout. Neither, however, has a relationship with the AG like Riggs Abney.

The Tulsa firm's first public connection with Edmondson, who has been Oklahoma's AG since 1992, appeared in the late 1990s. Riggs Abney was one of several Oklahoma firms that worked with Edmondson on the state's tobacco settlement, which landed Oklahoma's private attorneys $250 million from the final settlement - and Riggs Abney $30 million.

In the years since then, AG Edmondson and the Oklahoma Democratic Party have counted Riggs Abney as amongst their most faithful contributors. In the years 2001-2004, one researcher discovered, 15 attorneys at Riggs Abney donated almost $50,000 to Edmondson's re-election campaigns.

Partners M. David Riggs and Mike Turpen were Edmondson's largest individual donors within the firm, giving $8,600 and $8,100 respectively. Riggs has also donated several thousand dollars to the presidential campaigns of John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry in recent years, records show.

Riggs served as a Democrat in the Oklahoma legislature from 1971 until 1988. Records of his donations to state Democratic causes date back to 1990 and include a $250 donation to Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign.

Turpen's post-Big Tobacco donations to Edmondson, a long-time friend, included the firm's single largest gift of $4,000 and three of $1,000. Turpen served as Oklahoma's Democratic attorney general from 1983 to 1987, four years before Edmondson was elected AG, after a stint as Muskogee County District Attorney.

Long a well-known Oklahoma media figure and a partner at Riggs Abney since 1987, Turpen is rumored to have influenced Edmondson in mid-2003 to prosecute failed communications giant WorldCom despite an on-going U.S Attorney's investigation of the company. Edmondson was perceived as sabotaging the federal probe, which had been progressing for more than a year.

Turpen at the time was serving as an outside counsel to rival telco SBC, and one report claimed Turpen had asked Edmondson to prosecute WorldCom. Edmondson instead claimed "the lack of any serious sanction against WorldCom, either corporately or its individual officers," as the main reason he brought charges.

Two years later Riggs Abney was made lead attorney in Edmondson's Big Chicken suit and has since helped rack up several million dollars in legal fees for Oklahoma's taxpayers, with no end in sight. The AG's lawyers most recently tried to stop the spread of chicken waste altogether in the area - a major inconvenience to small poultry operators.

A legal win in Big Chicken, it's safe to say, would be Riggs Abney's biggest to date through its Edmondson connection. But watch that subprime mortgage space.

Edmondson give Mike Turpen NEW PAYOUT !

Edmondson's lawyers
face big payout in Big Chicken suit
by Rob Luke

As the latest chapter of Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson's Big Chicken saga drags on, the private attorneys he hired to fight it must be thinking settlement.

And why not? The lawyers have markers out for a goodly chunk of whatever the 14 chicken-producing companies the AG sued in 2005 for polluting Arkansas headwaters might pay to get out of the lawsuit, thanks to their controversial contingency-fee contract with the AG. That's despite some questionable connections and recent history.

The three firms - Miller & Keffer, LLP; Riggs, Abney, Neal, Turpen, Orbison & Lewis; and Motley Rice - won a legal battle early last year against the defendants to keep their contingency-fee contract with Edmondson. Defendants including agribusiness giants like Tyson, Inc. and Simmons Foods, Inc. charged that the three stood to collect a third of any award and that the contract was unconstitutional.

The firms' motion also charged Edmondson with seeking to enrich his favorite lawyers. They might have forgotten that one of the Big Chicken firms - Tulsa, OK-based Riggs, Abney - could legitimately claim to have had that pleasure already.

The Big Chicken suit - State of Oklahoma v. Tyson Foods et al. (docket# 05-CV-329-GKF-SAJ) - in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma has now dragged into its third year after four fruitless years of negotiations. It centers around chicken waste allegedly spread by the defendants in the Illinois River headwaters, causing pollution in downstream Oklahoma.

The case has sparked a flurry of legal back-and-forths, most significantly with the judge's ruling last June that upheld the firms' contingency-fee agreement with the AG. That decision sparked outrage amongst groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (sponsor of this publication) that oppose such fee arrangements between private attorneys and the state.

In an amicus curiae brief in the Big Chicken case, the National Chamber Litigation Center (NCLC) wrote: "The use of contingency fees to compensate litigating counsel turns on its head the traditional dictum that the state achieves its goals whenever justice is done, not when it wins a large award."

One of Edmondson's law firms already knows plenty about large awards. Of the $250 million in attorney fees generated by Edmondson's tobacco settlement a decade ago, Riggs Abney picked up $30 million for its share. In the years since, the firm and its attorneys have donated thousands of dollars to the campaigns of Edmondson and other prominent Oklahoma and national Democrats.

Motley Rice is a well-known plaintiffs' attorney but since signing on with Edmondson it has faced several problems, most recently in West Virginia for allegedly directing part of a contingency-fee settlement to an out-of-state beneficiary. Meanwhile, Miller & Keffer's Bill Keffer, a Texas state legislator, sponsored a bill there placing more restrictions on property-owners trying to sue companies for environmental damage.

Now Edmondson and the lawyers have moved to place a moratorium on further chicken-waste spreading in the Illinois River area, halting all such activity. Small farmers in the area are concerned and the Oklahoma Farm Bureau last month got permission to file a brief in the case on their behalf.

A legal resolution looks further away than ever. A settlement, though, may be ever closer.

Woman opens home to Clinton for fundraising

Woman opens home to
Clinton for fundraising
By Michael McNutt
Capitol Bureau
Sun January 20, 2008

While her husband works to get people to open their wallets for Hillary Rodham Clinton, Susan Turpen opens her home.

Susan Turpen has held three events in the past eight years for Clinton in the couple's Oklahoma City home.

"It's exciting that we finally have a real, real qualified person who's not just the best woman to ever run, but I think in 2008 is the best candidate running regardless of party,” Susan Turpen said.

She became acquainted with Clinton through her husband, Mike, a former state attorney general and state Democratic Party chairman who met Bill Clinton in 1983 and served as his Oklahoma campaign manager in 1992 and 1996.

Mike Turpen is Hillary Clinton's finance director in Oklahoma, and Susan Turpen said she likes organizing events and keeping her husband's fundraising database in order.

"I've done my time in phone banks and stuff like that,” she said.

"I bring the gifts of organization, good follow-up for Mike and event planning.”

A fundraiser for Hillary Clinton was held in 2000 in the Turpen home when she was running for the U.S. Senate seat from New York.

Her home was the site of another fundraiser last year for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

She held a breakfast last week at her house for about 85 women who either supported Hillary Clinton or wanted more information about the two-term New York senator.

Susan Turpen said she met the Clintons through her husband and the couple got to know the Clintons well, spending a couple of nights in the White House during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Why does woman look up to candidate?

Her enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy is more because of her long record of public service than out of friendship, she said.
Hillary Clinton early in her career worked for the Children's Defense Fund and she ran a legal aid clinic for the poor in Arkansas before her husband was elected governor.

"Her life has not been a career of self-promotion,” Susan Turpen said.

"It's been a life about helping other people. And now she's trying to get to the highest forum where she can then impact other people's lives and make a difference in their lives.”

Clinton also knows the issues, and she's willing to take risks for causes she believes in, Susan Turpen said.

"She was a risk-taker when she did the health care initiative when her husband was president,” she said.

"She's a good listener, too. And I think, gender wise, women are better listeners and perhaps have more empathy.”

Turpen said she also likes the idea that a Clinton win would bring Bill Clinton back to the White House as an adviser.

"She was a key policy adviser for him and I think he will be a key policy adviser for her,” she said.

"When you find that dynamic duo, that's just very exciting for not only America but for the world.”