Bar’s Demand That Insurers’ Ad Be Halted Is Rejected

In a new bitter exchange between lawyers and insurers, the president of the State Bar of California asked the insurance industry to drop a radio advertisement suggesting that the Bar condones lawyers’ charging exorbitant fees to clients. The insurers refused.

In a letter to insurers, Bar President P. Terry Anderlini called recent advertising for Proposition 106, the insurers’ initiative to slash lawyers’ contingency fees, “completely unjustified,” “not true,” “false” and “misleading.”

But the insurers’ campaign responded Wednesday, arguing that Anderlini’s letter itself was “filled with . . . legal hoodwinking.”

Anderlini was not available for comment, but the president-elect of the Bar, Colin Wied, said the insurers’ response was “a cheap shot, but what do you expect when you take on a skunk.”

The exchange marked a new level of vitriol in the already impassioned dispute over the insurers’ advertising in the battle over five insurance-related initiatives on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The commercial that kicked off the latest round is a radio ad by the insurers in which a law professor suggests strongly to students that as lawyers they should charge their clients whatever they can get away with. It also asserts that the State Bar controls lawyers’ fees.

“This advertising maligns the integrity of both the legal education process and the State Bar, and totally mischaracterizes their roles in the attorney’s fee issue,” Anderlini said in his letter. “We request that you immediately withdraw this ad and refrain from using it or any other form of promotion or advertisement that misstates the facts.”

The insurers’ campaign responded that the present lawyers’ fee system “has been very unproductive for the clients (that) lawyers claim to represent,” that the Bar does have responsibility for allegedly failing to discipline lawyers for high fees and that the advertising will continue.

Under the contingency fee system, lawyers agree to take a client’s case for nothing and charge fees later only if they win a judgment or settlement. Proposition 106 would limit such fees to 25% of the first $50,000 of an award, 15% of the next $50,000 and 10% of any amount in excess of $100,000.