Fee-for-AII

Did San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto owe the state of Washington and various local authorities a refund of $2.3 million? In court for 95 days since last October, lawyers and witnesses in Vancouver, Wash., produced a total of 9,675 exhibits and an estimated 3,500,000 words of testimony and arguments on that question. Last week the jury somehow came to a decision after only 10 1/2 hours of deliberation. Their verdict: Alioto could keep the money.

It was by any measure a curious case. A highly successful antitrust lawyer in San Francisco before he became mayor, Alioto was asked in 1961 by the then Washington State attorney general, John O'Connell, to handle suits for triple damages against 24 electrical manufacturers that had conspired to fix prices at an improperly high level. Alioto was to be paid 15% of whatever he could recover, up to a maximum fee of $1,000,000. He eventually got the manufacturers to pay $16.2 million to his clients--the state of Washington, three cities, one port authority and eight public utility districts. Along the way, however, O'Connell consented to lift the $1,000,000 ceiling on Alioto's fee; Alioto got $2.3 million.

Alioto had turned over $802,814 of his fee to O'Connell and O'Connell's deputy, George Faler. Accused of conflict of interest, the attorney general responded that state officials have a right to practice law in their spare time. O'Connell said that he had worked on the case not only for the state but on behalf of his spare-time clients, the public utility districts. The fee from Alioto had been for that nonofficial work. Claiming that they had been unaware of all the Laocoon lawyering, the clients went to court to get the fees back.

"We felt the plaintiffs all knew that the fees were being shared and that the ceiling had come off," said Jury Foreman Gilbert Scott. Moreover, "We thought that the plaintiffs got their money's worth." But the three are not yet home free. They now face a second trial on criminal counts. The Federal Government has charged them with conspiracy and mail fraud in connection with the contention that their fee-splitting amounted to bribery of public officials.

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