American general finance lawsuit

William Sorrell has been Vermont's Attorney General since 1997, dealing with everything from murder cases to campaign finance reform to consumer fraud. A Democrat, he has often run as the nominated candidate from both main parties. A native and resident of Burlington, Sorrell graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in 1970 and Cornell Law School with a law degree in 1974.

He served as Chittenden County Deputy State's Attorney from 1975-1977; Chittenden County State's Attorney from 1977-78 and 1989-19 92; engaged in private law practice at McNeil, Murray & Sorrell from 1978-1989; and served as Vermont's Secretary of Administration from 1992-1997. As State's Attorney, he successfully prosecuted the first case allowing the admissibility of DNA evidence in a Vermont State Court and a 10-year-old homicide in which the victim's body had never been found. In May 1997 Governor Howard Dean appointed Sorrell to fill the unexpired term of Jeff Amestoy, who bad been named Vermont's chief justice. Sorrell's current term ends in January 2007.

In June of 2004 Sorrell became the president of the National Association of Attorneys General (NA4G) for a one-year term. Prior to his presidential year, be served as the chair of the NAAG Tobacco Committee and co-chair of, its Consumer Protection Committee. In June of 2003 he was chosen by his fellow attorneys general to receive NAAG's Kelley-Wyman Award, given annually to the Outstanding Attorney General who has done the most to further the goals of the nation's attorneys general.

Sorrell is on the board of the American Legacy Foundation; has served on Vermont's Judicial Nominating Board; as president of United Cerebral Palsy of Vermont; secretary of the Vermont Coalition of the Handicapped; and on the board of the Winooski Valley Park District.

An avid flyfisherman, Sorrell also hunts, enjoys outdoors activities and is a dedicated bicyclist and exerciser. He has two children, a daughter who turned 17 on the day of the interview, and a 15-year-old son. Sorrell noted that the Attorney Genera; office has a website, www.state.vt.us/atg/, which provides information on getting in contact with the office for anyone who has a problem they may need help with, or they have suggestions for improving the Attorney General's services.

Robert Smith interviewed Sorrell at Leunig's Restaurant in Burlington

VBM: What exactly is the Attorney General for a state and what does the Attorney General do?

Sorrell: The attorney general is the chief law enforcement officer of the state. It's an independent, elected position, so I don't really answer to the governor, I don't really answer to the Legislature. Though, obviously, I have to work closely with both.

Historically the position of attorney general started in Great Britain maybe a thousand years ago. It was initially the attorney for the crown, but the position evolved so that the attorney general came to represent more the public welfare. So I don't represent the governor, although anytime the state is sued, or is party to a lawsuit, the attorney general determines what the state's position is going to be in that lawsuit.

For example, Vermont was the first state to sue the Food and Drug Administration a couple of months ago, because they turned down Vermont's request for a pilot project to re-import drugs from Canada. They turned it down asserting safety concerns about the Canadian drug system.

So, the Governor's office asked us to please file suit against the FDA on the part of the state. So it was my call to make that decision. At the same time, the FDA turned down Illinois, and Illinois has gone ahead with their own program without suing, while we're in court now as the first state to have sued the FDA. When the governor asked us to take a look at it, we did, thought there was merit and went ahead and filed the suit.

VBM: How big a staff do you have in your department?

Sorrell: I have about 70 lawyers or assistant attorneys general who work for me. All but one of them serves at my pleasure. One has civil service protection, but the rest are so-called "at will" employees. We're organized into several different divisions. One, a criminal division, and I have the same authority to prosecute everything from shoplifting to murder, that the individual state's attorneys have in their respective counties. I have that statewide.

Our criminal division doesn't do a lot of the misdemeanor motor vehicle or minor theft cases. We do homicides. We just successfully prosecuted a rape/murder case out of Barre. We have full-time prosecutors assigned to the northern and southern Vermont drug task forces, so we work closely with the undercover police officers working in the drug arena. We tend to do a lot of the cases that maybe involve multiple victims, or are complex or white-collar crime cases.

We will usually review a case anytime a law enforcement officer injures or kills someone in the line of duty.

Sometimes we're asked by state's attorneys to co-counsel with them, or we're asked to take over the cases, and sometimes we just kind of go into the cases on our own. That's the criminal division.

We also have what we call a general counsel and administrative law division. That's the attorneys who work for the Agency of Transportation, highway condemnation work, the tax department enforcing the tax laws, all the elections, issues of campaign finance, alleged violations, things like that.

We also eventually do the prosecutions before the medical practice board, against doctors who are alleged to have violated their standards of care. That got us into the case of the doctor from the Northeast Kingdom who allegedly administered a paralytic agent to his elderly patient a couple of years ago and hastened her death. We got into the case through the medical practice board. We also took a look at it from a criminal perspective.

Then we have another large division called our Human Services Division. It services all of the departments in the Agency of Human Services. That would include Corrections, Social Services, inmate population issues that are in court, neglected and abused kids who are in state custody that the state wishes to place for adoption. All of the low income assistance programs, any cases that come out of that. The Medicaid program, fuel assistance, food stamps. Mental health all of the involuntary commitments to the state hospital or the actions to require folks with some mental health issues who are not in the state hospital to take medications. Many of these cases come out of the Department of Health. So that's the Human Services Division.

Then we have the Civil Division, which defends the state typically when the state gets sued. Anything from a snow plow driver who runs into you on the Interstate on a snowy night to allegations that the State Police have violated someone's civil rights in searching their home without a warrant or have used unnecessary force in arresting someone. Maybe a child in state's custody is alleged to have been sexually assaulted by a foster parent. The state might get sued for that. An inmate in a correctional facility might commit suicide, and the state could get sued for not maintaining proper supervision of this person who's a suicide risk. We defend those kinds of cases.

We also, of course, can bring cases in behalf of the state - for example that suit against the FDA or the suit against the tobacco industry filed four weeks after I came into office in the spring of 1997. It alleged that they lied about the addictive qualities of nicotine, they marketed to kids, they conspired to keep so-called safer cigarettes off the market.

Now Vermont receives $25 million a year forever from the settlement of that lawsuit. The last division is an important one called the Protective Division. It handles civil rights cases arising from discrimination against Vermonters in employment in regard to race, age, gender, handicap, sexual orientation - we handle all of those cases.

We also deal with environmental protection - the enforcement of Vermont's environmental laws, but Vermont is also one of the states suing the large electric power company that's allegedly responsible for Vermont's acid rain problems.

The soft coal powered generating facilities in the Midwest, with the prevailing winds from the West, that don't have the up-to-date, state-of-the-art pollution control equipment in their generation processes. Our forests and waterways are suffering the impact of that acid rain.

We filed, along with a number of other states, against a number of power companies in this country. A global warming suit was filed this past summer. We're not looking for money there, but seeking to curb so-called greenhouse gas emissions to try and address the global warming problem. Then we prosecuted a fellow for dumping known carcinogens into Otter Creek, and we prosecute leaky underground storage tanks.