Group Lists Trial Lawyers’ Political Gifts : Spending: A San Diego attorney, his firm and family have given $800,000 since 1990, leading the state, according to a tort reform organization.

At a time when trial lawyers are proving to be perhaps the most generous political givers in the nation, one plaintiff’s lawyer from California stands out: William Lerach of San Diego.

According to an analysis of trial lawyers’ campaign contributions released Tuesday by the American Tort Reform Assn., Lerach, his family and his law partners have contributed more than $800,000 to candidates running for office in California and at the federal level since 1990.

Lerach and his firm--Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes & Lerach--are among the nation’s leading litigators of stockholders’ class-action suits on a contingency fee basis against companies accused of securities fraud. The American Tort Reform Assn. wants to limit such suits.

According to the study, Lerach and his law partners have made contributions totaling at least $225,425 since 1990 to California candidates. As a result, his firm was judged by Tort Reform researchers to be the biggest political giver among plaintiffs’ lawyers firms in California, and possibly the most generous such trial lawyers firm in the country.

Nationally, Federal Election Commission records show that Lerach personally contributed $137,713 to federal candidates over the last four years; $250,000 to the Democratic National Committee, and $7,500 to the Democratic Congressional Dinner Committee.

At the same time, his wife, daughter and law partners made generous contributions to many of the same candidates, bringing the total to more than $800,000 on the state and federal level.

Although the Tort Reform Assn. analyzed these contributions with the intention of demonstrating that trial lawyers have considerable political clout, their research also is consistent with previous independent computer-assisted studies conducted by The Times.

In 1991, The Times disclosed that Lerach had contributed $74,000 to congressional candidates during the previous two years, violating a law that forbids anyone to contribute more than $25,000 to federal candidates during a two-year campaign cycle. He was subsequently fined $7,100 by the Federal Election Commission for his actions.

Lerach is out of the country and could not be reached for comment. He has said previously that his generosity is spawned by a general interest in public affairs, not by a desire to stave off tort reform.

Nevertheless, in an invitation to a fund-raising event that he hosted in 1991 for a number of leading Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), Lerach advised other trial lawyers on the guest list that “this event will give us an opportunity to support and express our views to some of the most influential members of the Senate who are in a position to protect the rights that we fight for on a daily basis and must preserve.”

Although a number of campaign reform organizations have previously studied contributions to federal candidates by trial lawyers, the Tort Reform Assn. is the first group to look closely at giving by trial lawyers on the state level. The study focused on three states: California, Alabama and Texas.

It found that trial lawyers in California contributed $3.4 million compared to $8.8 million in Texas and $5.1 million in Alabama. Judges in Texas and Alabama face voters more often than judges in California.

In California, the big contributors to state candidates included:

Robert B. Steinberg and his firm, Rose, Klein & Marias, Los Angeles, $131,055; Joseph W. Cotchett, Cotchett, Illston & Petrie, Burlingame, $123,250; Bruce Broillet, Greene, Broillet, Taylor & Wheeler, Santa Monica, $82,250; Don Green, Green & Azevedo, Sacramento, $74,550; John A. and Thomas Girardi, Girardi & Geese, Los Angeles, $55,200; Vincent Bartolotta Jr., Thorsnes, Bartolotta, McGuire & Padilla, San Diego, $40,700; Phillip Borowsky, Cartwright, Slobodin, Bokelman, San Francisco, $40,050; Michael Scranton, Concord, $38,550; Ralph J. Jacobson, Gillin Jacobson & Ellis, Berkeley, $31,100; Richard J. Simons, Furtado, Jaspovice & Simons, Hayward, $30,500; Arnold Schwartz, Mazursky, Schwartz & Angelo, Los Angeles, $30,250; Michael N. Rucka, Rucka, O’Boyle, Lombardo & McKenna, Salinas, $29,495; Ronald Rouda, Rouda, Feder & Tietjen, San Francisco, $28,700; Ian Herzog, Santa Monica, $28,250.