SALEM -- Recent observers of Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers' luck getting his ballot titles past the state's Supreme Court could have seen this one coming.

In Charles Tauman vs. Hardy Myers (SC S54299), the Oregon Supreme Court again sent Myers back to the drawing board to rewrite parts of the voter explanation passages for an initiative petition (referendum) - in this case IP55.

The Oregon Supreme Court has ruled against Myers on his writing of the explanations, called ballot titles for seven different petitions in the past few months. Most have favored conservative issues like tort reform.

Initiative Petition 55 would restrict the amount law-firms could charge under contingent-fee contracts in civil cases. It is very similar to Initiative Petition 51, the subject of a recent successful challenge against Myers ballot-title writing (SC S54203).

In this case the Supreme Court ruled that Myers needed to rewrite both the yes-vote and the no-vote result statements, and essentially for the same reasons as those in IP51. In each case Myers does not clarify that the measures apply to plaintiffs' lawyers.

"An understandable description of the result of the proposed measure's rejection must refer accurately to the group chiefly affected by that act: law firms representing plaintiffs in certain civil cases," wrote Justice Robert D. Durham.

The court also ruled that, as with IP51, Myers's No-vote statement that current law places "no limitations" on lawyers' contingencies is incorrect.