Will 2 SC law firms get $75M for their work in plutonium settlement? It’s up to a judge.

A state judge said Tuesday she would rule soon on a request to freeze $75 million in public money that State Attorney General Alan Wilson wants to give two private law firms for legal work they did in helping the state get a $600 million political settlement from the federal government.

The settlement resolves a 20-year dispute between South Carolina and the federal government and requires the federal government to pay $600 million to South Carolina and remove some 11 tons of deadly plutonium from the Savannah River Site. The money for the attorneys would come out of the $600 million settlement announced Aug. 31.

“I am going to take this matter under advisement,” state Judge Debra McCaslin said at the end of a Richland County court hearing Tuesday afternoon.

The Public Interest Foundation, a public interest group, John Crangle, a citizen, have filed a lawsuit questioning the merits of awarding $75 million in legal fees to two Columbia law firms — one of which is Wilson’s former law firm, Willoughby & Hoefer.

McCaslin said she would rule quickly, adding, “I know time is of the essence.”

The $75 million already is moving through state financial channels and will be transferred soon to the two law firms, if it has not been transferred already, J. Emory Smith Jr., a top attorney in Wilson’s office, told the judge at the hearing.

“It is essentially out of our hands,” Smith told McCaslin.

Smith said the Attorney General’s office requested the state Comptroller General to start the payment process at 11:21 a.m. on Friday, and Crangle’s and the Public Interest Foundation’s lawsuit wasn’t filed in Richland County state court until 11:58 a.m. on Friday — 37 minutes later.

“There was nothing that required a stop on this money,” Smith said. “There was no injunction order issued on Friday, there was a request but there was no hearing scheduled.”

Attorney Jim Griffin, who represents Crangle and the Public Interest Foundation, told the judge that another attorney, State Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, on Monday had requested the Attorney General’s office to halt any payments of the disputed money until hearings could be held in Griffin’s case and a related Hutto case.

Consequently, Griffin said, the Attorney General’s office should have known Monday at the latest that there were ongoing legal cases questioning the disbursement of the money and halted any transfer of funds.

‘An astronomical amount’

Griffin called the $75 million in attorneys’ fees “an astronomical amount.”

“What they have done is a blatant attempt to undermine the authority of this court and the jurisdiction of the judiciary,” Griffin told the judge. “If they had nothing to hide, they would stand up and defend this case.”

Griffin’s lawsuit calls for a hearing about allegations in the lawsuit that the two law firms actually did little work for their $75 million fee and a court must approve that award.

According to Wilson and other officials, the $600 million settlement announced Aug. 31 did not result from a court decision. It was a political settlement that was a result of negotiations between various officials, including Gov. Henry McMaster and Sen. Lindsey Graham, and the Trump Administration. Attorney General William Barr agreed to pay the $600 million out of a special U.S. Department of Justice fund made up of money the federal government collects from fines.

The Willoughby and Davidson law firms, the recipients of the $75 million, did the initial court work, including handling multiple appeals on legal issues in federal court. But the appeals did not involve any exhaustive pretrial work or investigations, according to Griffin’s lawsuit.

Smith argued to the judge that Griffin’s lawsuit should be dismissed. Not only is the $75 million in the process of being transferred, Wilson had the lawful authority to transfer the money, Smith said.

Moreover, to get an injunction stopping the Attorney General from transferring $75 million to the law firms, Griffin’s clients need to show they would suffer “irreparable harm” and they have not done that, Smith said.

Smith denied trying to dodge the issues Griffin raised.

“There certainly was no intent to try to avoid this thing,” Smith said.

The fee is “part of a binding contract signed with outside counsel several years ago when no one anticipated a settlement anywhere nearly as high as $600 million,” according to a Tuesday filing in the case by Smith.

Griffin told the judge that his clients brought the lawsuit on behalf of all taxpayers, who have the right to file suit to hold public officials accountable for alleged unauthorized spending of public money.

“This is our case,” Griffin said.

Also at Tuesday’s hearing, Smith told the judge the Attorney General’s office will ask the Legislature to give it up to $15 million of the remaining $525 million in settlement funds.