Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘politics’

“We do have too many lawsuits”

So said John Edwards, in tonight’s vice presidential debate with Dick Cheney.

As he has done many times before, Edwards also said he was proud of his record of suing drug companies, insurance companies and HMOs. He did sue those kinds of defendants sometimes, but his actual specialty was suing doctors. Why won’t he say he was proud of that, too?

Unless I missed it, Cheney did not do much to contradict Edwards’ claim that his proposed liability reforms will keep bad cases out of court. For more on that question, see my August WSJ piece.

More: Why, asks Michael Graham of National Review Online. wasn’t Cheney familiar with Edwards’ legal cases? It’s hardly as if they’re above criticism. On the senator’s CP cases, also check out the correspondence back in August between Ramesh Ponnuru and an unnamed letter-writer on NRO “The Corner”. Plus: Prof. Bainbridge comments. FactCheck.org (not .com!) sorts out the Halliburton stuff. Jay Nordlinger says Edwards “sounded more anti-lawsuit than Cheney did”. And CBS News reports, based on feedback from its live poll (in which viewers graded the debaters as they went along using their remote controls), that: “Both candidates scored high points when they talked about the need to limit lawsuit and keep frivolous lawsuits out of the system, Cheney when he mentioned that doctors were being driven out of practice ?- especially OB-GYNs, which gave him very high ratings with women. Edwards did well when he said lawsuits must be limited and when he talked of his own experience fighting in the courts.” (“Uncommitteds Tab Edwards Winner”, Oct. 5).

Filed under: ,

The debatable Edwards

Just in time for tonight’s debate, the Capital Research Center is out with an anything-but-flattering report on the North Carolina senator and his role on the Democratic ticket (Robert James Bidinotto, “Kerry, Edwards and ‘the Lawsuit Lobby'”, Organization Trends, Oct. (PDF))(quotes me). And reporter John Riley of Newsday takes a more than usually thorough look at Edwards’ record in medical malpractice work (“GOP may seek to exploit Edwards’ trial history”, Oct. 4)(also quotes me). For this site’s coverage of the Smiling One, see July 19, Aug. 2, Aug. 2, Aug. 17, Aug. 23, Aug. 25, and many other entries on our politics page.

Filed under: ,

Malpractice discussion wrap-up

Over at Point of Law, the featured discussion has now wrapped up between Dr. Ron Chusid of Doctors for Kerry and our own Ted Frank on the presidential race and medical malpractice reform. If you haven’t looked at the exchange yet, you’ll find that it conveys a wealth of information about the state of the medical liability debate. Not surprisingly, I found Ted persuasive in arguing that Bush has the sounder position on this issue (which still doesn’t mean I’m going to vote for him).

Filed under: , , ,

Kerry’s career as a lawyer

Blogger Beldar, fresh from a prominent role in exposing the CBS scandal, applies merciless scrutiny to the senator’s brief stint in Massachusetts legal practice (Sept. 28). Okay, so maybe Kerry didn’t accomplish much while he was a lawyer, but we’ll have to think some more about whether that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Filed under: ,

Next at Point of Law: presidential debate

For its monthly Featured Discussion, our sister website Point of Law has lined up a debate on legal reform and the presidential race. Could John Kerry “go to China” and bring about a significant overhaul of the malpractice system? Would a second GWB term result in more progress toward nationwide reform than has the first? Ron Chusid D.O. of Doctors for Kerry will face off against our own Ted Frank. Look for things to get started Monday; the discussion will be found here (bumped Sept. 20).

Filed under:

Illinois court race: what it takes to win?

Careful about crossing the Litigation Lobby, cont’d: Dwight Kay, the finance chairman of Republican Lloyd Karmeier’s campaign in the hotly contested race for a seat on the Illinois Supreme Court (see Aug. 29, etc.), is crying foul and suing two political consultants over a visit the two paid to the home of Kay’s ex-wife in which Kay says the two falsely represented themselves as disability investigators and sought to elicit information from her about the couple’s divorce. One of the two consultants, Doug Wojcieszak, heads up a group called Victims and Families United, which is backed by trial lawyers in Illinois’s famed Madison County and promotes their interests. Wojcieszak and co-defendant Tom Denton of Tactical Consulting in Carbondale deny the charges and call the suit politically motivated and an example of hypocrisy (Jim Muir, “Two local men accused of Constitutional rights violations”, Southern Illinoisan, Aug. 12; “Defendants say lawsuit politically motivated”, same date).

Per AP, “Wojcieszak admits visiting Diane Kay on July 13. He said he was looking into Dwight Kay’s legal past since the candidate Kay supports, Karmeier, ‘wants to limit others’ access to the courts. …Wojcieszak also denies allegations he was behind an incident of garbage rifling last spring outside the Okawville office of Sen. David Luechtefeld, a longtime friend of Karmeier’s and chairman of his campaign.” (Susan Skiles Luke, “Lawyers group to watch judicial election ads”, AP/Chicago Sun-Times, no longer online). Curiously, Wojcieszak “served for a year as the executive director of Illinois Lawsuit Abuse Watch, a tort-reform group” and later switched sides. (Illinois Times, May 27).

Filed under: , , ,

Close call for California Senate

Meeting in private caucus, the majority Democrats in California’s state senate have selected as the next leader of that chamber Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, rather than rival contender Sen. Martha Escutia, D-Whittier. That’s good news for California business because Escutia, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been a key supporter of trial lawyer causes and chief sponsor of many bills backed by the litigation lobby. (Steve Lawrence, “Democrats pick Oakland lawmaker as new Senate leader”, San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 24; “Perata, president pro tem” (editorial), San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 26). Operatives with close links to the state’s trial lawyers had waged a mudslinging campaign against Perata (Dan Walters, “Lawmakers engaged in bitter battle for control of California Senate”, Sacramento Bee, Jul. 9, no longer online).

Filed under:

Political notes

According to the Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum (Sept. 2), commenting on President Bush’s convention acceptance speech, “His biggest applause line of the night came when he took a shot at trial lawyers.” Drum terms this “weird” and doesn’t understand why the issue might resonate so, however. While on the subject of the Washington Monthly, it has a symposium on a Bush second term which includes a Grover Norquist article predicting dramatic setbacks at the national level for the trial bar if GWB is re-elected, which would certainly be a change from the lack of same in his first term. And in Florida, former housing secretary and former president of the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers Mel Martinez prevailed in a hard-fought primary against former Rep. Bill McCollum (see Feb. 21, May 6) with a campaign so nasty as to cause the St. Petersburg Times to withdraw its previous endorsement of Martinez; Democrat Betty Castor will be his opponent in November (editorial, Aug. 30; Miami Herald, Sept. 1).

Filed under:

Cash for pols and judges: like curing cancer, sort of

From another article on the extraordinary role played by trial lawyers in Illinois Democratic fundraising (see Aug. 29):

Chicago trial attorney Myron Cherry said political fund raising is another aspect of his charitable work.

“I view politics the same way as eradicating cancer,” Cherry said.

— Dennis Conrad, “Illinoisans among Kerry’s top fundraisers”, AP/Daily Southtown, Jul. 29. The article goes on to note that trial attorneys’ extensive involvement in politics frequently focuses on issues of litigation reform that “could affect their legal income”.

Filed under: ,