EAST ST. LOUIS – Monsanto, Solutia, and Pharmacia moved on May 22 to disqualify former chief judge John Baricevic of Belleville and others as counsel for East St. Louis in a suit seeking billions in penalties for 50 years of alleged contamination by polychlorinated biphenyls.
Solutia counsel Charles Hobbs of St. Louis County filed the motion for all defendants, claiming representation of government by private attorneys requires neutrality safeguards.
“There are no neutrality safeguards in this litigation,” he wrote.
He attached the fee agreement showing lawyers will receive 40% of any recovery and 45% if anyone appeals, plus reimbursement of 18 kinds of expenses.
“Every attorney representing the city of East St. Louis including the city attorney for East St. Louis, John Baricevic, has a financial interest in the outcome,” he wrote.
Hobbs claimed lawyers conceived the litigation and designed it to “provide as much pecuniary benefit to the contingency fee lawyers as possible, all in the name of government.”
The city served nuisance citations on Monsanto, Solutia, and Pharmacia in St. Clair County court in 2021, claiming they damaged parcels that belonged to the city.
According to Hobbs, defendants found the fee agreement among 42,518 pages of documents the city made available for review on a rolling basis beginning last November.
The agreement allocates 42.5% of the fee to John Driscoll of Puerto Rico and his St. Louis firm, 42.5% to Sanders Phillips Grossman in Tennessee, and 15% to Chatham and Baricevic.
It raises the fee to 45% if anyone appeals, and it provides that attorneys in the agreement do not agree to pursue an appeal.
It provides that if resolution or settlement involves consideration other than financial, counsel can negotiate a fee or reimbursement in addition to their fee on recovery.
Hobbs claimed consideration other than money presumably meant an offer to investigate or remediate contamination on city property.
He wrote that any such recovery would belong to attorneys.
“In other words, the city’s attorneys have made sure that there can be no resolution of the litigation unless the city’s lawyers extract sufficient payment,” he wrote.
Hobbs claimed contingency fees are prohibited in pursuit of criminal penalties, stating ordinance violations are misdemeanors with sentences up to six months.
He claimed contingency fees are permitted in some civil public nuisance cases brought by cities or states but a government lawyer with no interest in the outcome must retain complete control.
He also claimed East St. Louis relinquished control.
“Due process demands that before the government deprives a person of property, the judicial procedures leading to that deprivation must be fundamentally fair,” he wrote.
Hobbs requested a stay until the due process violation can be addressed.
Bernard Ysursa of Belleville also represents Solutia.
Adam Miller, Katherine Landfried, Tyler Schwettman, Michael Cromwell, and Rachel Berland, all of St. Louis County, represent Monsanto and Pharmacia.