ATTORNEY: UNFAIRLY SINGLED OUT

JACKSON -- Attorney John Lichtenegger of Jackson says he and his law firm were unfairly singled out in a state audit indicating laws were broken and money misspent in the office of former Missouri Attorney General William Webster.

State Auditor Margaret Kelly announced the findings Thursday in Jefferson City.

Kelly said the attorney general inappropriately provided $67,000 in office furnishings and support staff in St. Louis to Lichtenegger.

A Webster supporter, Lich~tenegger was paid more than $137,000 during a six-month period last year to handle the state's defense of the Second Injury Fund.

Kelly said Lichtenegger's firm was the only one to receive these "special provisions."

But Lichtenegger said that "any reference to our firm being treated special is absolutely absurd. We went out of our way, above and beyond the call of duty, to do this work and get it done."

The attorney said that he and his firm, at the request of the attorney general's office, took over the defense of the state's Second Injury Fund in about 4,000 cases.

Those cases had been in the hands of another lawyer, William Roussin, a former Webster fundraiser who has pleaded guilty to federal charges.

"Nobody wants to be a Second Injury Fund attorney. We were just trying to help," said Lichtenegger, chairman of the University of Missouri Board of Curators.

He said five attorneys and two paralegals with the firm worked almost full time to clear up the cases over a six-month period, beginning last June. "Essentially, that works out to $34 a case file."

"The attorney general at the time was wanting to find somebody outside of the St. Louis area to go to St. Louis to clean up the mess.

"It was a heck of a mess," said Lichtenegger, pointing out that some of the case files had been seized by authorities in connection with the Roussin investigation.

He said his law firm had to handle "a truckload of files" involving Workers' Compensation cases.

"We spent three or four months of solid reading (of cases)," he pointed out. "You had to do all kinds of things while doing this.

"You had to be trying cases and taking depositions. It took us four months, with everybody reading constantly, just to read these files," said Lichtenegger.

"We completed the cleanup of that mess in St. Louis, he said.

Lichtenegger said the state provided the office space on the sixth floor of the Laclede Gas Building, across the street from the Workers' Compensation office.

The attorney general's office provided support staff in the form of one summer intern, who assisted for about a month and a half, Lichtenegger said.

"We didn't take anything with us. We didn't take as much as a paper clip from the place," he said.

"It is absurd for Margaret Kelly to indicate that we have some responsibility to pay for office equipment that was the property of the attorney general," he maintained.

"We think we did an excellent job. The administrative law judges in St. Louis know we did an excellent job," he added.

He said his law firm did not charge for mileage or time spent traveling between Jackson and St. Louis.

"We did it under our contract in terms of fees that we were allowed to charge: $65 an hour for associates and $35 an hour for paralegals and $70 an hour for partners.

"Those rates are way below our normal rates," he said.

Lichtenegger's law firm is one of two Southeast Missouri firms that have had contracts to handle Second Injury Fund cases. The other is the Burns and Taylor law firm in Sikeston.

Lichtenegger said there are about 35 attorneys in outstate Missouri that have handled such cases for the state over the years. "This has been done this way for about 45 years."

He said, however, "there obviously has been a tremendous amount of abuse in St. Louis, where about 70 percent of the Worker Compensation claims in the state are filed.

"So at least 70 percent of all Second Injury Fund cases are filed there," said Lichtenegger.

Lichtenegger said he is working with the new attorney general, Jay Nixon, on the transition to the use of attorney general's office staff attorneys in handling Second Injury Fund cases.

He said the office he previously used in St. Louis now houses attorney general's office staff who are handling Second Injury Fund cases.

"Everybody but Margaret Kelly knows what the facts are here," said Lichtenegger.