Billing in Smog Case

* Re “Cut in $88.5-Million Lawyers’ Fee Unlikely,” Dec. 13: OK, so what’s the big fuss about Alex Rodriguez’s $252-million 10-year deal in baseball? The lawyers who hit us taxpayers for $88.5 million for pointing out that California had charged a smog fee in error make more than that on an hourly basis.

How ironic to read on the same day about the HMO doctor in Winters, Calif., who makes house calls and was paid $70,000 per year [before he left his HMO] and that there is not enough money to keep our education up to standards. According to my calculation, each lawyer in the smog case billed us for a teacher’s salary every day before he or she went to lunch and, by afternoon tea, made more money than the old-fashioned doctor in Winters makes in a year.

Pro bono anyone?

NILS-ERIC SVENSSON

Corona del Mar