GOP questions Conlin’s fees from Microsoft trial

Republicans took aim at Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Roxanne Conlin on Tuesday, attacking attorney’s fees awarded as part of the 2007 settlement of an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp.

Roxanne Conlin, a Des Moines attorney and a Democrat running for U.S. senate.

The attorney’s fees, which a Polk County judge set at $75 million, returned to the headlines Tuesday when Gov. Chet Culver and Conlin announced another portion of the settlement — an agreement by Microsoft to provide half of the funds not claimed by consumers to Iowa public schools in the form of technology vouchers.

That amount totaled $60 million.

Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn called on Conlin, who served as co-lead attorney on the case, to donate a substantial portion of the fees to public schools.

“Roxanne Conlin got filthy rich from this case,” Strawn said, adding: “Meanwhile, Democrats have overspent the state’s resources and forced schools to make massive cuts, likely requiring property tax increases. Instead of ‘passing the buck,’ Democrats like Conlin should donate a million or two of theirs.”

Des Moines-based conservative nonprofit American Future Fund also attacked the attorney’s fees, saying Conlin “lined her pockets with a $75 million commission from the lawsuit.” Schools are facing deep budget cuts, the group said, and the settlement money won’t come close to solving their problems.

“And the truth is Roxanne Conlin profits while Iowa school children suffer,” the group said in a statement.

But the fees were not awarded solely to Conlin. They were set by the presiding judge and went to pay 150 lawyers, law clerks and assistants who worked on the case at four different law firms over the course of the seven years. They also include $7.8 million the law firms spent on the case and a bank loan of $2 million taken out by Conlin. As part of the settlement, attorney’s had to document and justify every dollar spent.

When the settlement was announced in April 2007, legal experts who followed the case said that because of the length and complexity of the trial, along with the difficulty of anti-trust litigation, the $75 million was not out of line.

William Raisch, who teaches antitrust law at Drake University School of Law, told The Des Moines Business Record shortly after the settlement was finalized that in addition to the going hourly rate for lawyers in the community, attorney’s fees also include “time and labor, the novelty of the case, the skill needed to be successful, the undesirability of the case and attorneys’ fees in similar cases.”

A spokesman for Conlin’s campaign said the Des Moines Democrat’s track record speaks for itself.

“Roxanne Conlin has worked her way from poverty to the top of her field nationally,” said spokesman Mark Daley. “Along the way, she wrote the first law of it’s kind protecting victims of rape, helped draft the Violence Against Women Act and obtained $60 million for Iowa schools to secure a brighter future for our kids.”

Conlin is one of three Democrats hoping to unseat U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley in 2010. The others are former state legislators Tom Fiegen of Clarence and Bob Krause of Fairfield.