The speaker of the New York State assembly, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, was paid between $350,000 and $450,000 for his "of counsel" work in 2012 by plaintiff's lawyers Weitz & Luxenberg, according to a newly required detailed financial disclosure reported in the Daily News.
That's considerably more than his income as Assembly speaker. It's certainly possible that Mr. Silver is opposed to tort reform for public policy reasons or ideology rather than for personal financial reasons, but the current arrangement makes it rather difficult to put that proposition to a test.