Reform Efforts Gather Momentum In Missouri
April 20, 2009
A Wall Street Journal editorial picks up on the news that legislation to make Missouri’s judicial selection process more transparent and less influenced by special interest groups passed the state House last week. For more info on reform efforts in Missouri, read my previous posts here and here.
As the Journal correctly points out, letting a committee dominated by trial lawyers meet behind closed doors to decide who controls the courts has failed to take politics out of judicial selection in Missouri – unless you think handing control over to one political party is the essence of nonpartisanship.
The failure of “merit” selection – a system where an elite star chamber of lawyers gathers in secret to anoint judges – has also led Tennessee to look for ways to make judicial selection more democratic (that’s with a small “d”). Political leaders are beginning to recognize that shifting the power to select judges from voters to trial lawyers—who only want to pad their wallets—isn’t a great economic strategy:
“The continued reign of a judiciary chosen by trial lawyers and Democratic partisans is showing signs that its time has passed. For states looking to save their economies from tort-lawyer pillage, reducing the power of lawyers to dictate judicial selection would be a start.”
Posted by Dan Pero in the categories: Judicial Elections, Missouri
One Response to “Reform Efforts Gather Momentum In Missouri”
I live in Missouri but was raised in Kansas and have been sued in both states by “professional serial litigant plaintiffs” with extremely bad personal, professional ,civil and criminal records. In the Wilson County (Fredonia) Kansas Case# 2006-CV-25 the plaintiff is a disgruntled heir and life long professional victim who also operates a lawsuit plaintiff recruiting and attorney referral website. The plaintiff’s goal was and is to induce the court to order two other heirs and I to surrender two parcels of land that we had inherited from our father via Transfer On Death Deeds and deed those properties to the plaintiff. The judge eventually rendered a Summary Judgment in our favor recently but only after one other defendant and I had spent over $50,000.00 in attorney fees but the plaintiff has filed a notice of appeal. To add insult to injury we have been advised that we can’t declare that $50,000 in legal fees as a tax deduction. But we can declare doctor bills as a deduction. That is an ominous omen. The lawyers NOT the plaintiffs are the “head of this beast”. The plaintiffs are only the “shills for the lawyers”.
Reining in the racketeering lawyers, holding them accountable, limiting their power and putting a cap on “their take” would drastically reduce frivolous lawsuits. It would also drastically reduce contempt for the law and generate far more respect for the law -, on both sides of the law –, and prevent far more violence than will “gun control”.
Ivan L. Fail (Retired Federal Prison Officer)
Sparta, Missouri