Senator Kerry has selected former trial lawyer Senator John Edwards as his running mate. Jim Copland covers on PointOfLaw. Overlawyered has had extensive coverage of Edwards’s career and fund-raising (Feb. 26; Feb. 3; Feb. 2; Jan. 26; Jan. 23; Jan. 20; Sep. 16; pre-July 2003; and links therein). The Chamber of Commerce is so distressed by the selection that the Wall Street Journal reports that it may abandon its traditional stance of neutrality to campaign against the Kerry-Edwards ticket. (Alan Murray, “Business Elite Vows To Take On Kerry If He Taps Edwards”, Wall Street Journal, Jul. 6) (via Kaus). Murray suggests that Edwards could allay fears that he’s in the pockets of the plaintiffs’ bar by joining the bipartisan support for class action reform (see Mar. 16 and links therein). To do so, however, Edwards would have to flip-flop his previous opposition to the Class Action Fairness Act; he consistently voted against reforms in committee. (Senate Report 108-123).
Posts Tagged ‘John Edwards’
Baron to co-chair Kerry’s “Victory ’04”
Almost enough to make you want to vote for Bush: Dallas mass tort operator Fred Baron, poster boy for legal ethics and co-finance chairman of John Edwards’ presidential campaign (see Feb. 19), has been named co-chairman of Kerry Victory ’04, a joint effort by the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of presumptive nominee Kerry. “Baron says his contacts with contributors who can write big checks which, no doubt, include high-profile Texas plaintiffs lawyers were, in part, responsible for him getting the new post.” (“Texas Lawyer With Edwards Ties Joins Kerry Team”, Texas Lawyer/New York Lawyer, Jun. 2). More: detailed article on how Kerry, whose “voting record shows strong support for the plaintiffs bar”, has inherited the support of John Edwards’ trial-lawyer-based fund-raising machine (Lily Henning, “Edwards’ Army Recruited for Kerry Cash Push”, Legal Times, Jun. 18). Includes quotes from Washington mass tort attorney John Coale (“Kerry has just about a perfect record on issues that interest lawyers and trial lawyers,”) and our friend Lester Brickman. What if Kerry names Edwards as his v.p. pick? “If he’s on the ticket, you can reasonably predict that the amount of giving from trial lawyers will double or triple,” Brickman says. “They will unzip their wallets like they never had before. This would be unprecedented.” Yet more: the AP is on the story (Sharon Theimer, “Trial lawyers boost Kerry’s campaign effort”, AP/Houston Chronicle, Jun. 20)
“Edwards gave loan to a federal judge”
“In 1994, when Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) was still the biggest tort lawyer in North Carolina, he lent $30,000 to a federal bankruptcy judge who was then overseeing a case on which Edwards?s wife, Elizabeth, did much of the legal work. The judge, J. Rich Leonard, is a longtime friend of Edwards?s. … Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University who has brought ethics charges against judges before, said the arrangement presented a ‘compelling case of conflict of interest. It is hard to imagine a judge could rationalize presiding in a case where he holds a loan from a couple,’ he said.” Both Judge Leonard and the Edwards campaign deny impropriety and say the loan was fully disclosed and was repaid. Although Elizabeth Edwards’s law firm received a $1 million contingency fee for its work in the case she handled before Leonard, the fee was paid after she had already left the firm and she has said that she did not receive any of the proceeds. (Geoff Earle, The Hill, Mar. 2). Plus: instant retrospectives on the Edwards campaign (Chris Suellentrop, “The Pretender”, Slate, Mar. 2; Michael Graham, “The littlest candidate”, National Review Online, Mar. 3).
Stuart Taylor, Jr. on Sen. Edwards
He reviews Edwards’s autobiography, Four Trials, which “provides a window into the faux-populist pretenses and other flaws of the system that made this millworker’s son into a multimillionaire.” Aside from Edwards’s cerebral palsy wins, much discussed in this space, there was the punitive damages award he obtained after a truck crash, against the trucking company for having paid its drivers by the mile: the justice of this $4 million award is open to much question as a matter of blame-fixing, aside from which it “ultimately came out of the pockets of the same ordinary, hardworking Americans whose champion he purports to be — and a big chunk of it went into the pockets of John Edwards. … Edwards’s business-bashing, anti-free-trade, us-against-them campaign rhetoric, unlike John Kerry’s, seems sincere. Edwards sounds as if he believes in his bones that behind every misfortune there must be a wealthy villain.” (Stuart Taylor, Jr., “John Edwards: The Lawsuit Industry Puts Its Best Face Forward”, National Journal/The Atlantic, Feb. 25).
Steve Bainbridge, noting Edwards’s jobs-jobs-jobs economic rhetoric, wonders whether the Senator pauses to worry about certain jobs destroyed by some of his main backers (Feb. 25). Edwards’s latest fund-raiser in Houston was hosted by John O’Quinn, who as the impresario of the breast implant litigation that bankrupted Dow Corning knows a thing or two about destroying jobs (Rachel Graves, “Fund-raisers bring Edwards to town”, Houston Chronicle, Feb. 24; Ken Herman, “The 2004 Election”, Cox/Palm Beach Post, Feb. 25). And on the Edwards-and-cerebral-palsy controversy that we and several other webloggers were pursuing earlier this month, Franco Castalone (The LitiGator) has added a pair of posts clarifying and extending his earlier comments, the first of which (Feb. 15) relays a wealth of information about no-fault birth injury compensation programs and the litigation they would replace, and the second of which (Feb. 16) makes some valuable points about civility in disagreement, and also says generous things about this site.
John Edwards and the money power
“We are not going to lose the race for lack of funds”, said Dallas trial lawyer Fred Baron, finance co-chairman of the Edwards campaign (and poster boy for legal ethics) as the Wisconsin primary approached. (Rob Christensen and John Wagner, “Edwards sees no reason to surrender”, Raleigh News and Observer, Feb. 12). The challenge for Edwards’s fund-raising was spelled out by the Washington Post last month (Paul Farhi and Thomas B. Edsall, “Filling War Chests Key As Campaigns Progress”, Jan. 21): “The North Carolina senator has received a higher percentage of large donations than any other major candidate — 83 percent were between $1,000 and $2,000, the maximum allowed by law. Many of these donations came from plaintiffs’ attorneys, members of Edwards’s former profession. This means that many of Edwards’s donors have ‘maxed out’ and can give no more money. For Edwards to become fully competitive in the race for cash, he will have to find new contributors beyond his trial-lawyer base.” Why, even many of the paralegals, receptionists, bankrupt support staffers of law firms and their nonvoting husbands have maxed out (see Hill News, May 7, 2003). For more on Edwards’ fund-raising, see Feb. 3; Jan. 27; Jan. 23, 2004; Aug. 5 and Apr. 7-8, 2003; and Jul. 18 and May 1-2, 2002. More: Kerry press secretary Stephanie Cutter imprecisely describes Edwards campaign as “wholly funded by trial lawyers” (Adam Nagourney and David M. Halbfinger, “Kerry and Edwards Square Off as Dean Abandons Campaign”, New York Times, Feb. 19)
Edwards’s self-reinvention as the candidate of trade protectionism has provided another reason for sensible voters to steer clear of him. As Alex Tabarrok notes: “In his stump speech, John Edwards is fond of empathizing with the plight of a 10-year old girl ‘somewhere in America,’ who goes to bed ‘praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today, because she doesn’t have the coat to keep her warm.’ Yet, as John Tierney points out, ‘clothing has become so cheap and plentiful (partly because of textile imports, which Mr. Edwards has proposed to limit) that there is a glut of second-hand clothing, and consequently most clothing donated to charity is shipped abroad. The second-hand children’s coats that remain in America typically sell for about $5 in thrift shops.’ (emphasis added)”. See “Nader Searches for His Roots”, New York Times, Feb. 15. To be sure, Edwards has some familiarity with the internationalization of markets: when the populist Senator and his wife left their Massachusetts Avenue mansion to trade up to a nicer mansion on P Street, they disposed of the old one “for $3 million to the Hungarian government for use as an embassy”. (Marc Fisher, “Regular Guys Who Live In Mansions”, Washington Post, Feb. 17). See also Byron York, “John Edwards Cares about YOU!”, Roll Call/National Review Online, Feb. 17. (& welcome WSJ “Best of the Web”, Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, and (thanks!) Steve Bainbridge readers)
And the answer is, “Goldman Sachs”
The question is, “Which is the odd name out in a list of John Edwards’ top ten contributors?” The other nine names on the list are all in the attorney line of work, but one of them — Hartford’s Robinson & Cole — could also be considered an odd name out, since it doesn’t specialize in plaintiff’s litigation (Greg Gordon, “Lawyers top Edwards’ list of supporters”, Sacramento Bee, Feb. 1).
The Chicago Sun-Times, meanwhile, finds that Edwards isn’t the only candidate drawing heavy backing from Chicago’s personal-injury bar. While big-league tort lawyers Phil Corboy and Tom Demetrio are backing Edwards, for example, Robert Clifford is supporting Kerry. “I have maxed out [donating] to Kerry, Edwards, Gephardt — those are the three I really favored,” said Gene Pavalon. “Kerry and Edwards are my two friends, and they’re friends, and it’s going well for both of them,” said Joe Power. “They’re both consumer-oriented individuals who many trial lawyers have helped.” (Abdon Pallasch, “Edwards among top lawyers, but not all elite attorneys here back him”, Feb. 3)(more on Edwards’ fund-raising: Jan. 23 and links from there, Jan. 27)
Cerebral palsy: what Edwards knew
Mark Steyn on John Edwards
“[H]is stump speech often sounds less like a political platform and more like a laundry list of class-action suits he’d like to get a piece of ?- we need to act against credit card companies that charge excessive interest etc.” (“Knowns, unknowns and the Ketchup Kid”, Daily Telegraph (UK), Jan. 27). The cash register continues to ring for Edwards with his friends in the Texas bar: “At the end of the fall filing period for campaign contributions, Texans had given more to John Edwards than to all of the other Democratic candidates combined, almost $2 million.” (Shelley Kofler, “Texas money a major part of Edwards’ NH campaign”, WFAA-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), Jan. 27). On the other hand, Dave Barry thinks the photogenic Senator may be losing the bowlers’ vote (“Senator who? We’re trying to bowl here!!”, Miami Herald, Jan. 26; Julian Borger, “Edwards bowls along, with Dean still at a loss”, The Guardian (UK), Jan. 26)(via Command Post). See also Rich Lowry, “The Trial Lawyer?s Shtick”, syndicated/National Review Online, Jan. 27.
Another traffic record; Laura Ingraham radio show
With our commentary on John Edwards drawing links from all over the place, yesterday was another record day for traffic, with 12,908 unique visitors, breaking Jan. 7’s record of 10,798. We’re being forced to upgrade to a new and more expensive hosting plan, but that’s the sort of problem it’s nice to have (to send us an Amazon donation that will help defray the costs, click here).
I’m set to appear as a guest on Laura Ingraham’s national radio show to discuss Sen. Edwards, but not this morning as originally scheduled. It’ll probably be next week.
Edwards’ persuasive powers
Having long taken an interest in the career of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (see Sept. 16, Aug. 27 (talk about bad predictions!), Aug. 5, earlier posts), we are not entirely surprised that the silver-tongued trial lawyer/politician did so well among Iowa Democrats, not to mention charming such commentators as Mickey Kaus (scroll to second “P.P.S.” item) and Andrew Sullivan (second item). As we’ve had occasion to note, before entering politics Sen. Edwards had some of his greatest success representing families of kids with cerebral palsy against the doctors who’d allegedly botched their deliveries — this despite a steadily mounting pile of research (see Feb. 27, 2003) tending to refute the popular theory that cerebral palsy is commonly caused by obstetricians’ conduct during labor and delivery. Last March, in a letter to the editor printed at this site, Mississippi physician S.W. Bondurant wondered whether the press would look into the question of whether Edwards’s trial wins were based on sound science. Now reporter Marc Morano of the conservative CNSNews.com takes on that assignment (“Did ‘Junk Science’ Make John Edwards Rich?”, CNSNews.com, Jan. 20). Just to clarify my own views, which are quoted at some length: I don’t assert that every lawsuit blaming obstetricians for infant brain damage is unfounded. The problem is that our system gives wide leeway for cases of debatable scientific merit to be filed and then, after a battle of the hired experts, decided by appeals to jury emotion. (& welcome visitors from sites including Kaus (Jan. 20), Sullivan, MedPundit, Rangel M.D., Blog 702, MedRants, and many others)