TOAL & CO. GIVE TAXPAYER CASH TO AVARICIOUS ATTORNEYS

If you didn’t already know it, that headline probably came as a bit of a surprise. But folks, it’s true. Chief Justice Jean Toal and the South Carolina Supreme Court have it out for you and your tax dollars.

How else could you explain giving a pair of greedy trial lawyers — it wouldn’t be a stretch to call them “blood-sucking,” as one insider noted — more than $1 million in “attorney’s fees” for their “work” under the Teacher and Employee Retention Incentive program? You can’t, that’s how.

But the high court did it anyway, writing a pretty nice paycheck to the firms of Cam Lewis and Dick Harpootlian on Monday, signed by the taxpayers.

Mike Sponhour, spokesman for the State Budget and Control Board, which oversees the state retirement system, said his agency was “disappointed for the taxpayers of South Carolina.”

“This money cannot come out of the retirement system,” he said. “We are working with the Legislature to identify funds to pay this judgment.” [...]

Lewis and Harpootlian in court papers suggested they deserved $23 million, though the state claimed they should be paid $19,197 in total fees. [RICK BRUNDRETT - The State]

Twenty-three million dollars? As in two, three and six zeros? They better cure cancer or invent a time machine for that kind of money.

If they did invent a time machine, I would go back to when Lewis and Harpootlian took the bar exam and get their grades changed. Well, maybe that only works in the present.

At least Lewis said he was happy with his reward. Harpootlian, on the other hand, is still biting at the pie with every last gluttonous tooth he has.

But you know you’re a loser when the dysfunctional (at best) Budget and Control Board is calling you out for being a bungling moron. I mean, we’re talking about a group that recently gave significant pay raises to a number of unworthy bureaucrats.

Regardless, if the state has to pay $1,075,701 to these two firms, and the Supreme Court is going to hand out money like it grows on trees, then they should be footing the bill with money from their budget.