Lawyers: Paying for Influence

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Snarled by Washington's red tape, many a big-time businessman seeks a big-time lawyer with political connections. Some of the country's most successful lawyers routinely charge high fees for making use of know-who as well as know-how. But can the courts enforce the bargain?

On three occasions in 1963, Atlanta Lawyer Robert B. Troutman Jr. spoke to his friend, President John F. Kennedy, about a matter of interest to the Southern Railway Co. As a result, Kennedy asked his staff to discuss the case with the Justice Department, which decided to support the company in a suit against the Interstate Commerce Commission. Eventually the ICC withdrew an order concerning Southern's grain freight rates that the company believed was not in the public interest.

When Troutman tried to collect a fee, however, the company balked at paying. Troutman sued. When the case recently reached a federal court in Atlanta, a company vice president said that he had asked Troutman to use his influence, not to practice law. Moreover, the company argued, a court can not enforce an agreement for services that were technically illegal. In his instructions to the jury, U.S. District Judge Newell Edenfield distinguished between corrupt influence and using "personal connections or influence merely to gain access to a public official." Apparently deciding that Troutman had performed a proper legal service, the jury awarded him a fee of $175,000.