Beshear properly paid $4.2 million in Purdue Pharma legal fees, KY Supreme Court says
A Louisville law firm properly was paid $4.2 million in legal fees in 2016 by Andy Beshear — then Kentucky’s Democratic attorney general — for helping the state settle a lawsuit against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The fees paid to the firm now called Dolt, Thompson, Shepherd & Conway were challenged three years ago by Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, who argued that the firm’s contract with the attorney general expired in June 2015. Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron took over the case after Bevin left office last year.
However, regardless of the contract’s status, the 2016 state budget approved by the General Assembly and signed into law by Bevin clearly authorized payment of legal fees by the attorney general in the Purdue Pharma lawsuit, the Supreme Court said.
“The budget did not contain any condition, exception or qualification of its order to pay the Purdue Pharma attorney’s fees and costs. We assume that the legislature meant exactly what it said, and said exactly what it meant,” wrote Justice Samuel T. Wright III of Whitesburg.
The case had been one of several running courthouse battles between Bevin and Beshear, who won last year’s gubernatorial election.
Former Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway — Beshear’s predecessor in that post — oversaw the $24 million Purdue Pharma settlement, a far cry from the $1 billion that state lawyers once said the case was worth. Conway joined Dolt, Thompson as a partner after he left office in 2015.
Although Conway said he received no money from the settlement upon joining the firm, Republican officials have repeatedly criticized how the case was handled.
This story was originally published September 24, 2020 at 12:41 PM.
