Just last month, the federal courthouse on Long Island was named for Senator D’Amato in a ceremony full of praise for the defeated Republican politician, who is now a lobbyist. According to an Associated Press account of the courthouse dedication, Senator Clinton called Mr. D’Amato a “great public servant.” Governor Pataki said Mr. D’Amato “never forgot to fight for what he called the little guy.” And Rep. Pete King said Mr. D’Amato “fought for the average guy.”

Truth be told, Mr. D’Amato did some fine work in the Senate. It’s what he’s up to now that has us gagging at the thought of a federal courthouse bearing his name. Mr. D’Amato and his private lobbying firm, Park Strategies, LLC, just registered with the secretary of the Unit ed States Senate to lobby against Senate Bill S-887. That’s, as the lobbying registration puts it, “legislation requiring law firms to disgorge excessive attorneys fees earned in connection with the multi-state Tobacco Settlement Agreement.”

Who are Mr. D’Amato’s clients? The lawyers who were awarded a $625 million fee for their work on New York State’s litigation against the tobacco industry. Two firms footing the bills for Mr. D’Amato’s lobbying are Sullivan, Papaine, Block, McGrath & Cannavo, a Manhattan-based firm that won a $98.4 million legal fee, and Thuillez, Ford, Gold & Johnson, an Albany-based firm that earned $84.3 million. Another is a Manhattan firm called Schneider, Kleinick, Weitz & Damashek, which also got a $98.4 million fee and which is where the Democratic speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, hung his legal shingle before joining up with Weitz & Luxenberg.

The amounts of the fees we glean from accounts in the New York Law Journal. These lawyers, earning fees like that, aren’t exactly “the little guy” or “the average guy.” And the fees don’t come out of thin air. They were reached in a settlement between the state and the tobacco companies. The money, in other words, comes from average guys who are either paying more for cigarettes or more in other taxes than they would be if the fees were more reasonable.

Senator Kyl, the Republican of Arizona who introduced the bill Mr. D’Amato is lobbying against, estimates that the taxpayers of New York State (the little guys, as we call them) would recover $607 mil lion in excess legal fees if the bill passes. “It is critical that these funds be restored in this time of widespread fiscal crisis,” Mr. Kyl said in introducing the bill. “Today a large number of the states face massive budget deficits that threaten their ability to provide health care to the indigent, to fully fund public education, and to guarantee adequate and effective law enforcement. When such needs risk going unmet, fee abuses that cost the states billions of dollars simply can no longer be ignored. The states must receive their fair share of the tobacco settlement proceeds — funds that are badly needed to support basic public services.”

Mr. Kyl further noted that all of the attorneys who participated in the state tobacco settlement will still be generously compensated. Because the Kyl bill does not apply to the first three-and-a-half years of fee payments under the 1998 settlement, it exempts the first $2.5 billion — yes, billion — that these lawyers received. Promises Mr. Kyl: “Every one of the tobacco lawyers will have more than enough money left to pay for the yachts, luxury cars, and vacation homes that were purchased with the tobacco proceeds.” The bill, Mr. Kyl says, “might simply be described as the one-yacht-per-lawyer rule.”

How is it that all the liberal interest groups and politicians and newspaper editorialists that bemoan the supposed income inequality and benefits to the rich that result from the Bush tax cuts are nowhere to be heard when it comes to endorsing the “one-yacht-per-lawyer rule?” And the Bush tax cuts involve letting individuals keep more of what they earn, while the tobacco settlement involves letting the trial lawyers keep more of what the little guy earns.

Mr. Kyl further notes that George W. Bush, both as a presidential candidate and in his first budget as president, supported limiting the fees of the lawyers in the tobacco suits. Mr. Bush’s political loyalists might want to keep that in mind if they are considering giving Mr. D’Amato any kind of role, even behind the scenes, in the Republican national convention to be held in New York. Meanwhile, if Mr. Kyl by some stroke of good fortune gets his law passed, it will no doubt be subject to a legal challenge. If that legal challenge comes, let’s hope the venue is not the Alfonse M. D’Amato Federal Courthouse. For if it is, what is a judge to think?