Mississippi - Tax Settlement Funds Paid to Outside Counsel

Funds that a corporation paid, as part of the settlement of its delinquent tax liability to Mississippi, to a private law firm hired by the Attorney General to pursue the delinquency constituted public funds and had to be turned over to Mississippi. The funds that the law firm received were part of the corporation's payment of its tax obligations, and so that money constituted “public funds” for the purposes of the state auditor's statutory authority to recover misappropriated public funds. Article Four, § 100, of the Mississippi Constitution requires that those funds be deposited in the proper public treasury. Neither the Attorney General nor the law firm provided sufficient evidence to establish that the state auditor had waived Mississippi's claim to the funds. Further, the plain language of Miss. Code Ann. § 7-5-7 mandates that outside counsel retained by the Attorney General be paid only from the Attorney General's “contingent fund,” or from funds appropriated to the Attorney General by the legislature. (Pickering v. Langston Law Firm, et al., Miss. S. Ct., Dkt. No. 2010-CA-00362-SCT, 05/24/2012.)