Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘politics’

Not your usual AG candidate

Former California Gov. Jerry Brown is overwhelmingly favored to become the state’s next attorney general, but don’t assume he’ll necessarily follow in the footsteps of Bill Lockyer:

“I’m going to take a very practical, common-sense approach as attorney general,” Brown said in a recent interview. “I’m someone who’s acutely aware of the fact that we as a state have added 25,000 laws since I was governor. I think we ought to give people some space to live their lives.” …

And don’t assume that he will agree completely with Lockyer’s decisions. Asked about the global-warming lawsuit, Brown said he’d have to “take a good look at it.”

“I think there’s an issue of causation there,” he said, adding that California needs to consider automakers’ “imploding” financial situation. …

“He was the first politician to turn litigation into a press release [as California Secretary of State, elected in 1970],” said Hiestand, the former Brown aide [Fred Hiestand, now prominent in California litigation-reform circles].

In post-Watergate 1974, the reform-minded Brown was swept into the governor’s office. One year later, Brown and the Legislature were besieged with pleas from doctors facing skyrocketing malpractice insurance costs. Brown called a special session that would eventually lead to the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, or MICRA, California’s law capping pain and suffering awards at $250,000.

Hiestand remembers philosophical discussions with Brown on the best ways to compensate malpractice victims. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1964, Brown clerked for state Supreme Court Justice Mathew Tobriner, a contemporary of tort expert and future chief justice Roger Traynor. Brown, Hiestand said, recalled Traynor’s critical dissent in a 1962 case where a woman injured on a bus was awarded $134,000 for non-economic damages. Traynor said such awards were troubling because they are tied to subjective amounts of pain and suffering.

“At one point Jerry looks at me and says, ‘Money is a false god. If you’re in pain, you should turn to religion, sex or drugs,'” Hiestand said.

(Cheryl Miller, “Former Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown Runs for State Attorney General”, The Recorder/Law.com, Oct. 16)(cross-posted from Point of Law’s Featured Discussion on the election, which is still going great guns).

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Tomorrow at Point of Law: election roundtable

Just announced at my other website, Point of Law:

Tomorrow we kick off our next featured discussion, a four-day round-robin on the election and its implications for legal reform. It won’t be a debate format, more like a free-for-all of commentary and reporting that will tackle such topics as:

1) Races around the country where law and litigation have been an issue, or a motivating force;

2) Activist state attorney generals on the ballot, or running for higher office;

3) Ballot propositions to watch on election night;

4) Implications for lawsuit reform and other legal issues if one or both Houses of Congress turn Democratic.

Ted Frank, Jim Copland and I will all be participating, and we also expect surprise guests to stop by for one or more days. In fact, if you’ve got something interesting to say about the legal politics of Election ’06, we invite you to send any of us an email (my address is editor – [at] – this-domain-name – .com) to ask about contributing.

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October 30 roundup

  • My Oct. 28 WSJ op-ed is now on-line for free. [AEI]
  • Your tax dollars at work: $24.2 million for two 17-year-old trespassers burned by high-voltage electrical wires six feet above the top of an Amtrak train that they had climbed. The one who received “only” $6.8 million had injuries minor enough that he’s serving in the Army now. [Lancaster Online via Northridge Buzz Blog]
  • Refuting trial lawyers’ claims of repealing McCarran-Ferguson as a panacea for insurance rates. [Point of Law]
  • “At what point are these accommodations exacerbating learning disabilities, and creating life disabiltities?” [Ivey; Wall Street Journal]
  • $1.5 million verdict: plaintiff blamed her bipolar disorder on a nurse’s error that caused a lung to collapse. [Columbus Ledger-Enquirer; see also Kevin MD commenters]
  • Trial lawyers insult West Virginia businessmen for daring to challenge their hegemony. [Institute for Legal Reform]
  • Bank of America overcredits account, takes money back, gets hit with California state class action verdict that could cost billions. [Point of Law]
  • Latest Duke lacrosse case outrage: prosecutor’s office says it hasn’t even interviewed alleged victim. [Volokh; Outside the Beltway; Corner]
  • In anticipation of Philip Morris v. Williams, hear the great Sheila Birnbaum argue State Farm v. Campbell. [Oyez MP3 via Mass Torts Prof]
  • Kristol: the U.S. Senate still matters because of judicial nominations. [Weekly Standard]
  • Election challenge to Washington state incumbent Supreme Court justice who is supported by trial lawyers. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer via Bashman]
  • Don’t tell AG Lockyer, or he’ll want to sue the fat for global warming. [NY Times via Kevin MD]

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Jail4Judges: South Dakota Amendment E

Let’s be clear: one can take the position that there needs to be more judicial accountability and that too many judges overstep their bounds, and still think that Amendment E—the likely-unconstitutional South Dakota ballot proposal to end civil immunity for judges and jurors and establish an unanswerable “special grand jury” to oversee these things—is positively insane cuckoo bonkers. Opponents of the measure have set up a good website discussing the issues.

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What liberal media? Part 758

One would think that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood’s steering of $14 million in taxpayer money to a friend instead of using government attorneys at a fraction of the cost would be a major scandal, but The Sun Herald allows the story to be derailed into a trial-lawyer attack on lawsuit reform— and this is the “one hand/other hand” focus the reporter took:

“Some say the GOP pushes it because trial lawyers are the Democrats’ last major source of campaign funding. Others say Republicans push such changes to protect their major source of funding, big business.”

That reform demonstrated itself to be good public policy (especially in Mississippi, where its legal system was a notorious and shameful “judicial hellhole”) doesn’t seem to enter the equation. (Geoff Pender, “Battle over lawyer fees”, Oct. 25).

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“Trial Lawyers Inc. — Illinois”

At Point of Law (Oct. 18), Jim Copland announces a new report from the Manhattan Institute’s Trial Lawyers Inc. project:

This afternoon, the Manhattan Institute released Trial Lawyers, Inc.: Illinois, A Report on the Lawsuit Industry in Illinois 2006. The first comprehensive look at litigation in the Prairie State, the report synthesizes work done by the Illinois Civil Justice League, American Tort Reform Association, and U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, among others. The report also includes new information, such as the percentage of 2004 contributions to the Illinois State Democratic Party that came from plaintiffs’ lawyers and their firms (78 percent) and Illinois’ quantitative rank in terms of its medical-malpractice liability as a percentage of gross state product (49th of the 50 states) and its corporations’ self-insured liability as a percentage of GSP (48th).

The Madison County Record has already reported on the new study here.

More coverage: Adam Jadhav, “Metro East courts have improved somewhat, think tank concludes”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 19.

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Election watch: Sue Bell Cobb in Alabama

Sue Bell Cobb in Alabama is the trial lawyers’ choice in the upcoming election for Supreme Court Justice. Jere Beasley (a regular on Overlawyered) has used 22 different PACs to ship nearly half a million dollars her way. (See also Apr. 28, 2005 for similar machinations.) Skip Tucker of Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse has more details in today’s Anniston Star. (“Voters should consider history in court race”, Oct. 15). Trial lawyers previously supported Tom Parker in his unsuccessful campaign for the Republican nomination against current Chief Justice Drayton Nabers (POL Jun. 7), leaving Nabers with half as much to spend on television advertising as Cobb—but, of course, the only complaints about money in this election come from groups opposed to the money the Chamber of Commerce is spending in the hopes of having honest candidates on the bench. (E.g., this press release).

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Election watch: “Lawyer’s $1 million keeps Bell in game”

Texas:

Houston trial lawyer John O’Quinn saved Democrat Chris Bell’s struggling gubernatorial campaign from financial oblivion this week by making a record $1 million donation. …

“There’s something about a million-dollar check that really warms the heart,” said Bell.

O’Quinn has promised to raise another $4 million for Bell’s campaign, and that could make the Democrat more competitive with all his opponents [incumbent Republican Rick Perry, independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn (herself heavily backed by trial lawyers), and independent Kinky Friedman]. …

Bell said O’Quinn is not looking for special favors from state government.

“There’s nothing that state government can do for John, nor is he asking for anything but good government,” Bell said. …

O’Quinn, Williams and Umphrey were part of a legal team that shared in a $3.3 billion legal fee for settling the state’s lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

(R. G. Ratcliffe and Janet Elliott, Houston Chronicle, Oct. 11).

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