Kansas Dust Storm
September 1, 2010
Two years ago, a group in Johnson County, Kansas promoted a ballot measure to restore the right to vote for county judges and end the local “merit” selection board. They unfortunately came up short - in large part due to the fact that “merit” proponents outspent supporters of democratic judicial elections 3:1 to defeat the measure, with most of the money coming from legal elites.
A group of Kansas voters is again calling into question the “merit” selection process. The Kansas Reporter (published by Kansas Policy Institute) has an article describing the effort to get rid of “merit” committees in Leavenworth and Atchinson counties. A petition is circulating in those counties in hopes of placing the issue on the November ballot. Petition supporter Donna Gillett says lawyers are the problem - four of the nine members on the “merit” panel are elected by lawyers:
“The appointment system denies the citizens of this district the right to participate equally in the selection of our judges.”
The Kansas Reporter also describes a separate anti-”merit” group led by election lawyer, James Bopp. The group has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Wichita to stop five members of the Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission from participating in judicial selection - all five are lawyers and all were elected by the state bar association.
As with the petitioners, Bopp also believes the favored treatment of the legal class is a problem when it comes to the state’s “merit” process. In fact, he believes Kansas’s “merit” selection law violates both the U.S. Constitution and the Kansas Constitution:
“If the Kansas Constitution said that the AFL-CIO is going to select judges, or the Right to Life or KKK or whoever, it would be perfectly obvious that would be wrong and this is equally wrong,” Bopp said. “There is nothing special about lawyers, and they’re more conflicted because their bread and butter is personal injury, and judges determine those cases, so many lawyers have an interest in who is the judge.”
“Nothing special about lawyers” — couldn’t have said it better myself.
“Cynical Maneuvering”… A “Disdainful Ploy”
August 30, 2010
An on-target Detroit News editorial today sums up the disgraceful way Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver concluded her disgraceful career on the bench – by handing her seat over to soon-to-be-former Governor Granholm and shifting control of the court to liberal activists. Fortunately, the voters of Michigan will have a chance to make their voices heard in November.
How Big is $207 Million?
August 30, 2010
In their recently released report, the Brennan Center and Justice at Stake pose as a couple “nonpartisan” good government groups that only want to get money and politics out of judicial selection. Neal Peirce falls for it hook, line and sinker in his Seattle Times column yesterday.
Pierce leads off with the report’s “blockbuster” finding that total spending on judicial elections more than doubled from $83 million in the 1990s to about $207 million from 200-2009 – an increase of 149 percent to be exact. Sounds ominous – but is this evidence of special interest money pouring into judicial races or are judicial races just following a larger trend toward more expensive elections?
A quick dig through the invaluable Open Secrets provides the answer.
Between 2000 and 2009, presidential candidates raised $3.16 billion in three elections – an increase of 192 percent compared to the previous three White House races. In the 2000 election, George W. Bush and Al Gore (plus a few dogs and cats) raised $529 million. Eight years later, total contributions to presidential candidates Barack Obama, John McCain, et. al., reached nearly $1.79 billion – a 230 percent increase. Strike One.
By 2008, the winner of the average House seat spent $1.37 million, compared to $650,000 a decade earlier in 1998. That’s a 111 percent increase – a big jump, but not as much as judicial elections, so we’ll call that a foul ball, but still Strike Two.
Let’s take a look at the “worst” state identified by Brennan/JAS – Alabama. Between 2000 and 2009, we’re told, 45 Supreme Court candidates raised just shy of $41 million in five election cycles. During that same time period, there were just two gubernatorial cycles – not quite a fair comparison, but let’s have a look anyway. Between 2000 and 2009, 28 candidates for governor raised $62.7 million – 53 percent more than Supreme Court candidates in three fewer election cycles. If you add in 2010, the difference is even starker: 54 Supreme Court candidates raised just $42.2 million, compared to 41 gubernatorial candidates who raised $83.1 million – 97 percent more. Strike Three.
It seems pretty clear from just a cursory glance at historical election spending figures that the 149 percent increase in spending on judicial elections is comfortably in line with spending on other elections and doesn’t come close to matching the explosion in presidential campaign spending.
Of course, Pierce never notes that both Justice at Stake and the Brennan Center receive millions of dollars in funding by one of the country’s most powerful special interest groups – the Open Society Institute, bankrolled by hedge fund billionaire George Soros and underwriter of countless ultra-liberal causes.
If Neal Peirce wants to argue that citizens should give up their right to participate in the choice of state judges and turn the entire job over to a “merit” selection panel (usually dominated by legal special interest groups and elite lawyers), then he should just come right out and say so. Or at least he ought to be honest with his readers about the agendas of the Soros-funded groups that are trying to manipulate voters.
Judicial Coup D’etat on Michigan Supreme Court; Weaver the Deceiver Plays “Politics at its Worst”
August 27, 2010
Democrats have seized control of the Michigan Supreme Court as a result of a politically-rigged, backroom deal hatched months ago by Governor Jennifer Granholm and former Justice Betty Weaver.
In a surprise move, Weaver has stepped down from the bench, allowing Granholm a clear path to appoint hand-picked, trial-lawyer-friendly judge, Alton Davis. Granholm’s appointment goes into effect immediately and does not require approval by the state legislature.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not shedding a single tear in saying adios to Weaver. She has been an embarrassment to the bench for years. Detroit Free Press columnist, Brian Dickerson, famously summed up Weaver’s judicial acumen this way in a 2007 column:
“If you ran into Betty Weaver on a street corner and didn’t know she was a Michigan Supreme Court Justice, you might mistake her for a bag lady….Weaver can, in her most distracted moments, leave casual observers with the impression that she has temporarily lost her moorings in time and space.”
A well-known perk-grubber, she fought tooth-and nail to cling to a taxpayer funded car and a $60,000/year personal office. To top it all off, some of her fellow justices filed a complaint against her with the Judicial Tenure Commission earlier this year.
But this latest sleazeball move is an historic low, even for the likes of Weaver.
In an interview with the Detroit News, Weaver described a deal that makes the old Tammany Hall crowd look like a bunch of amateurs. She took credit for orchestrating the deal over the past several months:
“…first asking Davis whether he would be willing to replace her, then telling Granholm she would resign if Davis of Grayling [MI] was named to her seat. Weaver said Granholm first got in touch with Davis around June.”
Saul Anuzis of the Republican National Committee calls the whole affair “politics at its worst.” Josh Venable of the Michigan Republican Party has rightly called for an investigation into the inside dealings to see if any horse-trading or promises were made to make the deal go through.
As for Alton Davis? Hard to imagine the man can look himself in the mirror. Even harder to believe he can ever have any credibility as an unbiased Justice considering his role in this shoddy, shady exercise.
The most shameful result of this entire charade is that Gov. Granholm has completely excluded ordinary voters from choosing Weaver’s successor. While Davis will have to face the voters in November, he now does so as an “incumbent,” with all of the advantages incumbency provides. If Davis has any respect for the court – and for the people of Michigan – he should step down and let the voters select the next Michigan Supreme Court Justice.
Trial Lawyers, Inc. Targeting the Environment
August 26, 2010
Manhattan Institute’s indespensible series, “Trial Lawyers, Inc,” has done a tremendous job of exposing the business model and structure of the trial bar and quantifying the damage lawsuit abuse does to our nation.
A new installment has just been released in the series, this one on the environment. The report examines how trial lawyers are going green ($$$) by ginning up mass class action environmental lawsuits. According to the report, the trial bar is charging contingency fees that eat up a third of class proceeds and doing an end-run around legislator and regulators by using the courts to enact their policy aims.
Manhattan Institute’s Jim Copeland is the author of this latest report. Jim was published in yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily with an op-ed on climate change lawsuits, based in part on the arguments laid out in this latest report.
Tort Reform in California: Do it for the Kids
August 19, 2010
California is facing a $19 billion budget hole this year and the possibility of (once again) issuing IOUs instead of paychecks to state workers. Furloughs may soon be back en vogue, and the state’s debt rating is flirting with junk status. No sacred cows are being spared with proposals to slash spending on everything from schools to health care services.
But there are some California workers who are doing very well, thank you. You guessed it: trial lawyers.
Our friends at California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse are out with a new study that examines the staggering amount of money that California public school districts are spending each year on litigation. The study, “Lessons in Lawsuits: The Impact of Litigation on California’s Schools,” examines three years’ worth of legal costs at 12 California public school districts - including verdicts, settlements and lawyer fees.
The result? Litigation cost those 12 districts nearly $100 million over three years. Tom Scott, CALA’s executive director, said that this money could have “paid the salaries of more than 1,530 teachers, purchased nearly 600 new school buses, bought more than 1.1 million school desks or purchased 246,762 desktop computer packages.”
Of course all these whopping legal costs have a dire impact on the education of California’s children. Here’s an excerpt from the report:
“In June, the state Department of Education identified a record 174 of California’s school districts that were financially troubled, up 38 percent from January. Across the state, tens of thousands of teachers were pink-slipped this year, told the funding for their positions – to educate the next generation of Californians – was unavailable. In Los Angeles, the L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD) has cut disabled children’s programs, including shutting down 200 classrooms and an entire campus dedicated to serving the disabled and reducing busing for these students. The Kern High School District (HSD) was forced to auction off and recycle items like buses and student desks to raise money for its general fund. Travel for athletic teams and field trips also have been eliminated.”
Those students in Kern County, CA might be interested to know that while they were seeing their desks auctioned off, the district was spending $2.3 million defending against lawsuits.
Sounds like a healthy dose of legal reform would be a good first step toward closing the yawning budget gap in the Golden State.
Green Eyeshades Present Gift to Trial Bar
August 18, 2010
Think that companies are going to be straining under the weighty disclosure requirements and regulations of the new Dodd-Frank financial reform? Or that our nation’s employers will be bogged down with the new health care reform law and its mandates? Afraid to consider the impact Cap and Trade legislation might have on the private sector…not to mention on the length of the Federal Register?
Ah, but wait – there’s more! The green eyeshade army is preparing to unleash a set of rules that not only ratchets up publicly traded companies’ compliance costs, but also opens the floodgates to a torrent of new litigation. Read more
Medical Liability Report: 61% of Doctors Have Been Sued
August 17, 2010
Ted Frank at PointofLaw.com refers us to a new study from the American Medical Association. Key finding: 61% of doctors over the age of 55 have been sued. As Frank writes:
“When the majority of doctors face medical malpractice lawsuits (90% when one narrows it to oft-sued specialties like surgery), it suggests that doctors are getting sued for practice, rather than malpractice.”
“Merit” Selection Proponents Release New Report
August 16, 2010
This morning, National Public Radio reported on the latest study issued from the George Soros-backed “merit” selection movement. The report, authored by Justice At Stake, the Brennan Center, the National Institute on Money in State Politics, and a Hofstra University law professor, purports to document an “explosion” in state judical campaign spending - some $200+ million all told.
And is all of this unseemly campaign spending actually influencing legal rulings and judicial behavior? Well, no actual evidence of that, just poll numbers and concerns about “appearance” problems.
In fact, when Lancaster Online examined 82 recent cases in Pennsylvania courts (h/t Judges On Merit) and compared the outcomes in those cases to judicial campaign contributions, the article’s subhead said it all: ”There’s no evidence [that] money influences decisions of state Supreme Court justices.” Rachel Caulfield of the American Judicature Society is quoted in the article saying,
“I haven’t seen any successful effort to link contributions to decision-making.”
Of course, the Justice At Stake crowd doesn’t let such pesky details detract from their efforts to end all democratic state judicial elections. Why wait for hard evidence before re-writing state constitutions and scrapping elections?
I’ll be reviewing the new study and posting analysis of this latest report in the weeks ahead.
Important New Study from RAND
August 9, 2010
The RAND Institute for Civil Justice is out with an important new study on the asbestos litigation morass, specifically:
- 54 asbestos bankruptcy trusts have been established through June 2010, “with an considerable acceleration in the number of trusts established in the second half of the 2000s.”
- 9 more trusts are in the pipeline, “with undoubtedly more to come.”
- In 2008, approximately 575,000 claims were paid at a cost of $3.3 billion. Read more