Dear Editor: Having spent much of my own time, energy and money in a taxpayer action trying to expose the legal billing abuses at the SMUA, it was indeed very heartening to read SMUA Commissioner Michael Altilio’s letter. Mr. Altilio rails at the lawyers for gouging to the tune of several million dollars on a lawsuit doomed by rampant crime by the contractor and top officials at the SMUA. The lawyers milked this lawsuit for 10 years with legal bills averaging between $25,000 and $30,000 each month. The carrot employed by the lawyers was a promise of recovering more than $10,000,000 from insurance companies and well healed British financial houses. In reality, it was all smoke and mirrors because the minor players with responsibility went out of business or sought the protection of bankruptcy while the larger players correctly proved their lack of involvement or pointed to the rigged bid and forged/fraudulent bonds accepted by SMUA. Commissioner Altilio’s letter resulted from his lawyers being forced to disclose that recovery from the majority of defendants will at best result in $300,000-$400,000, a paltry amount when you consider the more than $3,000,000 paid to lawyers and experts. All this bad news before resolving the Mayo, Lynch lawsuit, an action started by Mayo Lynch claiming improper termination, undue influence by Secaucus officials on behalf of the contractor and inappropriate behavior by top SMUA officials. Unfortunately the engineer’s claims all proved correct when in 1990 the contractor confessed to bid rigging and SMUA’s Chairman, Executive Director and Chief Inspector pled guilty to bribery, extortion and all sorts of criminal acts with the contractor and others. I hope Mr. Altilio can now prevail upon the other SMUA commissioners to waken up and smell the coffee because this madness of legal expenditures must be stopped. Michael Lari