SAN ANTONIO – Most people can only fantasize about getting paid tens of thousands of dollars to kick back and read the newspaper. For the controversial Mikal Watts, however, it might be a reality.
In May, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he reached an agreement with county leaders that would divvy up around $1.5 billion obtained from a nationwide opioid settlement.
Dozens of Texas counties filed opioid lawsuits, many of which are being handled by Watts and his firm, Watts Guerra.
The Record obtained Watts’ time report from the AG’s Office, detailing his billable opioid litigation work for the past three years, which comes to 1,457.1 hours for a total of $1,382,915.
Like most high-profile attorneys, Watts’ time comes at a premium price – $950 an hour. Watts’ contingency fee contracts with Texas counties include a four-times multiplier, meaning his $950 an hour fee could potentially be $3,800.
And while many of his fees are the types one might expect to see on an attorney’s time sheet, such as spending 10.5 hours researching healthcare provider issues, there are several charges that might leave some taxpayers wondering who benefited the most from opioid litigation.
For example, on March 13, 2017, Watts spent 12 minutes reading an opioid article in The New York Times – a brief “research” effort apparently worth $190.
When researching, Watts turned to news outlets quite a bit.
On June 30, 2017, Watts spent a little over an hour pouring over a Times’ article exploring the costs of treating opioid addiction, a billable endeavor totaling $1,045.
The attorney’s time report includes two more entries for Times articles he researched at a cost of $380 and $190 respectively.
Watts is also apparently a fan of the Wall Street Journal, as the attorney billed around $1,500 for time spent reading and discussing WSJ articles.
On May 8, 2018, Watts read a piece on Politico about opioid distributors blaming pharmacies. He spent 1.2 hours researching the article for a price tag of $1,140, according to his time report.
Some of the other news publications with opioid articles worthy of Watts’ billable time include The Washington Post, Reuters, Bloomberg, Fox Business, The AP, Law360 and law.com.
Clicking news links isn’t the only way to research the opioid crisis, for Watts at least.
According to his time report, Watts exhausted three days reading "Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic." The attorney’s literary study of the book comes with a price tag of $13,395.
There are also some fees on Watts’ time sheet that seemingly have nothing to do with Texas, such as working with another Texas attorney in representing the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes in Western Montana for example.
Watts did not return a request for comment.