Last month, we blogged on an academic study that tried to put a nail in the coffin for the widely held belief that there is a causal link between election contributions made to public pension fund trustees and plaintiff-side law firms representing the pension fund in securities litigation.

But apparently that study doesn't sell newspapers, so muckraking stories continue to trickle in.

This story, from The Boston Globe, describes campaign contributions made by Labaton Sucharow attorneys and their family members to the Massachusetts state treasurer and two Massachusetts county treasurers. The three treasurers, by virtue of their positions, also hold the positions as chairmen of their respective pension funds, which range in size from $400 million to $30 billion.

The Massachusetts elected officials as well as the Labaton firm vigorously deny that any "pay to play" system is at work, even noting in the case of the large state pension fund that the four firms previously chosen to represent the fund in securities litigation are rotated, and were chosen as a result of a public RFP process.

Then last week, the New York Daily News ran two articles on the topic.

The first article notes that NY State Comptoller Thomas DiNapoli has received campaign contributions from 7 of the 16 firms on a "preferred list" of securities class action firms that his office has developed. In New York, the State Comptroller is the sole trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, one of the largest public pension firms in the world. The article also notes that both of the firms that Comptroller DiNapoli has selected to represent the New York pension fund in specific securities class actions suits since he took office in 2007 are among those who contributed to his campaigns.

Curiously, the article notes that one of the firms, was dropped from the "preferred list" only 5 months after having been selected to represent the fund in a suit. That firm still represents the pension fund in the case, making the removal all the more curious.

The second article notes that law firms representing the state pension fund in securities class action litigation have been awarded "$518.7million in fees over the past 10 years."

While the numbers don't lie, they certainly mislead.

First, the fees were generated, in large part, as a result of those firms having represented the pension fund in 3 of the 10 largest securities class action settlements of all time, with a collective value just for those three settlements of more than $10.5 billion. Thus, excluding any other cases filed by the pension fund during this 10 year period, the contingent percentage recouped by the law firms on those three cases is just 4.9%.

Second, the article does not discuss whether the fee awards mentioned were exclusively for lead counsel, or represented the total award for all law firms. A quick check implies that the awards are the overall award. Thus, the award to the lead counsel firm, which will still generally represent the majority of the fees generated, is less than the $518 million mentioned in the article.

Of course in New York at least, recently introduced legislation would create a board of politically appointed trustees to oversee the state's pension fund, supposedly curtailing the ability of firms to engage in "pay to play" practices.

Stay tuned for more developments in New York and elsewhere.