OKLAHOMA CITY -- Veteran Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson's aggressive pursuit of industry is harming the state's legal and business environment, a prominent conservative critic has charged.

Oklahoma City University law professor Andrew Spiropoulos, in an op-ed piece titled "New attorney-general model harms Oklahoma," compared Edmondson to New York's ex-AG Eliot Spitzer. He termed the AG's new style "destructive both to the rule of law and to the welfare of the state."

Edmondson recently drew stong criticism when a counter-complaint revealed he had hired three private law firms on contingency in his long-running suit against 14 Arkansas-based poultry producers. The three could net up to one-third of the settlement between them should the AG prevail, LNL noted early last month.

And several months ago Edmondson was also instrumental in Gov. Brad Henry's vetoing of a controversial tort-reform bill favored by business, LNL reported in May. The AG had earlier charged the bill "would severely hamper the state in its litigation".

Spiropoulos points to the AG's recent opposition to eliminating anti-business liability laws. On the issue Edmondson "seems never to have considered his job requires he value justice to individual defendants above collecting cash for the state treasury," Spiropoulos wrote.

The op-ed piece reminds politicians that allowing the attorney general to be "the state's chief plaintiffs' lawyer" is ultimately self-defeating. "These lawsuits economically will harm, not benefit, the state," Spiropoulos points out.

"Politicians sometimes forget that, as the airlines tell us, we have a choice of who to fly - and businesses have a choice of where they want to be," wrote Spiropoulos, who is also an adjunct scholar at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and a contributor to the Heritage Foundation.