Consumer clout is undeniable in the marketplace, as seen lately at work in the legal system and at the polls in West Virginia, indicating the importance of the state Consumer Protection Division and its likes across the country.

The agency in the Mountain State witnessed a showdown in the recent election between the agency's head, Attorney General Darrell McGraw, and the well-heeled West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, a link in a national chain of advocates.

Plainly, McGraw was re-elected in a show of power at the polls by consumers against the power of bundles of money spent on TV commercials and in newspapers. They accused McGraw of promoting lawsuit abuse to feather his own political nest.

More recently, Circuit Judge Ron Wilson knocked a related charge into a cocked hat. The judge ruled that McGraw was in legal bounds to hire outside lawyers in a case of consumer protection.

The case resulted in $3.9 million attorney fees for service to West Virginia consumers in the $12.2 million verdict against MasterCard and Visa.

In the 2003 lawsuit filed in Ohio County, the companies were charged with forcing retailers to accept only their debit cards as a condition to keep the credit card services of MasterCard and Visa.

The change allegedly harmed West Virginia consumers when the companies raised fees for retailers on debit card transactions, requiring a signature and not merely a PIN number for identification. The cost of the fee increase was passed on to consumers.

"West Virginians need to understand that we need to provide lawyers with a sufficient incentive to advocate zealously for our interest," Wilson wrote in his opinion.

Even so, according to public records, the lawyers in the case received only about 25 percent of the settlement, as compared to 30 percent or 40 percent in such cases.

Most of the settlement amounting to $11.5 million went to the state treasury, to fund a series of sales tax holidays for consumers of Energy-Star electronics and appliances deemed by federal standards to be more energy efficient.

The tax-free holiday will run three months this year on EnergyStar products and the ceiling will be raised to $5,000 per customer, said Gov. Joe Manchin's office.

The attorney general's Consumer Protection Division has only six lawyers. Plainly, the limited number requires going outside the agency for lawyers, especially to unravel knotty financial cases that are so much to do in the financial problems of the nation today.

In some quarters, the problem is better known as the money mess due largely to greed and gambling in markets ranging from home mortgages to oil contracts responsible for the price spasm at the gas pump last year.

Some analysts have found that the gas price shock had little or nothing to do with the law of supply and demand, but mostly with the greed and gambling by makers and managers of future oil contracts.

Overall, consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the nation's economic activity. It's about time consumers show as much power in government, the legal system, at the polls and in the marketplace, as glimpsed lately in the Mountain State.

Peeks is a retired business/labor editor of the Gazette.