[Mb-civic] Papers Offer Peek at Miers's Views - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Papers Offer Peek at Miers's Views

By Jo Becker and John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 11, 2005; Page A04

AUSTIN, Oct. 10 -- As a corporate lawyer, Harriet Miers once urged 
then-Gov. George W. Bush to veto legislation that would have prohibited 
the Texas Supreme Court from regulating or capping attorneys' fees, 
charging that the legislation did "violence to the balance of power 
between the legislative and judicial branch."

Miers, President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, said in her 1995 
letter to Bush that the legislation was a blatant attempt to protect a 
"handful of greedy, but immensely rich and powerful" trial lawyers.

The letter was among 2,259 pages of documents released Monday by the 
Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Most of the papers involved 
Miers's 1995-2000 tenure as chair of the Texas Lottery Commission. The 
documents provide a glimpse into her views on the proper separation of 
powers and the debate over making the civil justice system more fair and 
predictable.

In addition to chairing the lottery commission, Miers was the managing 
partner of a large Dallas law firm, Locke Liddell & Sapp. While she was 
running the firm, it helped accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP sell a 
sham tax shelter in 1999 by advising investors that they "should" be 
able to beat the Internal Revenue Service in court, according to a 
February 2005 Senate investigation report that came to light Monday.

The tax shelter in question, which was banned three years ago, allowed 
investors to turn ordinary income into capital gains income, which is 
taxed at a lower rate, and at the same time declare a substantial loss. 
According to the Senate report, Locke Liddell & Sapp appears to have 
made $3.5 million on 70 such deals, which the report called "potentially 
abusive or illegal."

The report quoted the legal adviser of a potential investor as blasting 
Locke Liddell & Sapp for effectively signing off on such investments. 
"From all indications, the transaction appears to be a classic 'sham' 
tax shelter that would be successfully challenged on audit by IRS," the 
legal adviser is quoted as writing to his client.

Miers was not mentioned in the Senate report. She was not a tax law 
specialist and did not have direct involvement in recommending the tax 
shelter, according to White House spokesman Allen Abney. "As we 
understand it, Miers had nothing to do with these transactions and was 
not in any way a part of them," he said.

Tom Connop, who has been the firm's spokesman on Miers, did not return a 
phone call.

Miers's letter urging Bush to veto legislation came as lawmakers were 
debating a host of measures he had pushed that were aimed at limiting 
lawsuits. The Texas Supreme Court had announced that it was going to 
launch a study of contingency fee arrangements, in which lawyers agree 
to take a case in return for a percentage of the verdict, which prompted 
trial lawyers to lobby lawmakers to pass the bill in question.

Bill Whitehurst, former president of the Texas Trial Lawyers 
Association, said lawmakers were concerned that the state Supreme Court 
was "getting ready to do something that was not the court's prerogative."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/10/AR2005101001492.html
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