In his final message to members before starting a planned retirement, National Association of Attorneys General Executive Director Chris Toth took a swipe at critics, including a number of Republican AGs and unnamed “Beltway publications,” who have questioned the organization’s management and practice of collecting tens of millions of dollars in settlements negotiated by state AGs.
Saying he needed to “clarify current misconceptions,” Toth said NAAG policy is set by AGs, not staff members, and any major decision must be signed by at least one Democratic and one Republican member. His comments appear designed to address criticism by several prominent AGs, including Texas AG Ken Paxton, that NAAG has become a tool of Democratic politicians who are pursuing left-wing, pro-trial lawyer policies. Paxton and the AGs of Arizona, Missouri and Montana recently announced plans to exit the professional association.
“NAAG lately has been criticized by a number of attorneys general, with those criticisms being echoed by certain Beltway publications,” Toth wrote. “Clearly, in the minds of at least some members, `NAAG’ is synonymous with the NAAG staff.”
One of the biggest points of controversy over NAAG is the group’s practice of carving off a piece of settlements with corporations for itself. The Washington non-profit has amassed a war chest of nearly $300 million from such agreements, over the objections of critics who say any settlement dollars belong to the states and should be appropriated by state legislators. Republican AGs have compared NAAG to a litigation-finance operation, using money from past settlements to lend money to individual AGs to pursue new cases.
The organization recently collected $15 million out of a of a $573 million nationwide settlement with McKinsey & Co., more than double the $7 million NAAG said it extended to state AGs to investigate opioid-related claims against the consulting firm and more than some states got from the settlement.
“I hesitate to address the McKinsey case again,” he wrote, “but it continues to be held up as an example of what is wrong with multistates and NAAG.”
Toth called it a “misperception” that NAAG is engaged in litigation and said NAAG staff “do not participate in negotiating settlements.” Half of the $15 million went to “repay a grant” that funded the litigation, he said, and the other half was spent on a repository of opioid-related documents.”
Both were approved by an executive committee of NAAG members without dissent.
He acknowledged that NAAG sometimes collects money for its training foundation, which he said allow the group “to provide trainings and other services at no charge to your office or the taxpayers of your state.” Critics of NAAG say any dollars obtained in corporate settlements belong to the states, not individual AG offices, and therefore the group is actually spending state dollars when it puts on programs.
Finally, Toth criticized the Conference of Western Attorneys General and the Attorney General Alliance, which together include most of the state AGs as members. He said he has “become increasingly alarmed at the growing influence of lobbyist and corporate money” and CWAG in particular “seems to exist for no other reason than to provide access by such actors to attorneys general.” Both organizations rely on corporate funding, he said, placing AGs “I a very compromising and potentially embarrassing situation.”
Toth made no mention of NAAG’s practice of inviting plaintiff attorneys to its meetings or of collecting money it uses to fund programs from settlements negotiated by those private lawyers working under contingency-fee agreements with the states.
National settlements have showered billions of dollars in fees on private lawyers, including some $2 billion from a $26 billion opioid settlement and hundreds of millions of dollars a year influential Democratic plaintiff lawyers still receive as fees from the multistate tobacco settlement they negotiated in 1998. NAAG received more than $100 million from that settlement and once leased space in a Washington building paid for with tobacco settlement money.
NAAG announced Toth’s retirement last year and is searching for a replacement.