By Mike Stanton
Journal Staff Writer

The two leading candidates for Rhode Island governor are trading accusations of "pay to play."

Former U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee, the independent candidate, is accusing his chief rival, Democrat and state Treasurer Frank T. Caprio, of receiving more than $70,000 in campaign contributions in exchange for his family law firm steering lucrative Station nightclub fire lawsuits to a Boston law firm.

And the Caprio campaign is firing back that Chafee has accepted tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from the Providence law firm of Edwards & Angell, which received city legal business when Chafee was the mayor of Warwick in the 1990s, and where Chafee's father, former U.S. Sen. and Rhode Island Gov. John H. Chafee, was a lawyer.

In 2003, when Caprio was a member of his family law firm, Caprio and Caprio, the firm began representing 33 victims and families affected by the deadly Station nightclub fire in West Warwick that claimed 100 lives and injured more than 200 others.

As is typical in such cases, the Caprios referred the cases to a larger law firm with the resources to pursue complex and costly litigation, Cooley Manion Jones of Boston. When the lawsuits eventually settled, the Caprio law firm received $1.7 million in fees, Cooley Manion partner Patrick T. Jones tells The Providence Journal. That's from a total settlement of $176 million that went to all of the fire victims, $59 million of which was for legal fees.

Jones says that he began working on the Station fire cases almost immediately after the February 2003 fire. Two years later, in 2005, campaign records show, Jones began raising campaign money for Caprio. From 2005 to 2010, the Chafee campaign says, Jones helped Caprio raise more than $70,000 in campaign contributions.

Jones estimates that he has raised "north" of $50,000, and closer to $100,000, for Frank Caprio and his brother, David, a state representative. But he says there was no quid pro quo.

Jones points to a 20-year relationship he had with the Caprio law firm. A few months before the Station fire, Jones, a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer, had been admitted to the Rhode Island bar and opened a Rhode Island law office in the Caprio Building in Providence. Jones also received referrals from other lawyers, and wound up handling about 80 Station fire cases.

"It's apples and oranges,'' Jones told the Journal, referring to his political support of Frank Caprio and his legal work on the Station fire cases. Jones says that he believes in the Caprios, but that he has no personal interest in government legal work.

He continues to maintain an active personal-injury law practice in Rhode Island, where he spends two to three days a week.