Legally Blind
Q: When is a contract legally non-binding?
A: Apparently when Anne Lopez herself, the state’s top attorney, signs it.
That’s the only conclusion one can draw after reviewing invoices submitted by a law firm that contracted with the state to represent the Agribusiness Development Corporation as it fought another state agency, the Department of Health, over terms of a pollution control permit.
Neither the law firm, Alston & Bird, nor the Department of Attorney General, which selected the firm and signed the contract, nor the ADC, which was to pay the legal fees, questioned the firm’s invoices that from the outset violated contract terms as they sailed past the dollar limit specified in the contract and charged over $160,000more in hourly billings than the contract provided for.
Now the ADC is saddled with an obligation it has no funds to pay, at a usurious rate of interest, to a fellow state agency. And, unless another contract is issued or the current one amended yet again, Alston & Bird is under no contractual obligation to see the permit challenge through to its end.
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