Mark Tapscott and Cheryl K. Chumley, The Examiner
2007-09-21 07:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

When the American Association for Justice — formerly the American Trial Lawyers Association — held its national convention in Chicago in July, members were treated to  rousing speeches from five leading Democratic presidential candidates.

Chicago was the perfect place for an AAJ convention because Cook County, Ill., ranks fourth on the American Tort Reform Association’s ranking of “Judicial Hellholes,”  places where judges often apply the law and court procedures to favor liability lawyers at the expense — literally — of defendants.

That’s why, as ATRA notes, “the litigation industry is booming in Chicago.”

The presidential aspirants were among friends because liability lawyers are among their party’s biggest supporters, providing campaign cash and legal-system encouragement of the Democrats’ liberal policy agenda at all levels of government.

Having helped elect a Democratic congressional majority in 2006, AAJ and other liability lawyer groups are eagerly working to put a Democrat in the White House in 2008. “We are now in attack mode,” Chris Mather, AAJ’s vice president for communications, told National Journal earlier this year.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is the lawyers’ White House favorite, with more than $6 million in AAJ donations, twice as much as her next biggest group, data from the Center for Responsive Politics show.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who made millions on medical malpractice suits, is also popular among liability lawyers, but he’s returning  $4,600 he received from William Lerach.

Earlier this week, Lerach signed a plea bargain with federal prosecutors admitting his guilt in an $11.8 million kickback scheme covering at least 150 cases that netted an estimated $200 million for his former law firm, Milberg Weiss of New York.

Edwards will also likely be returning contributions he received from Melvyn Weiss, Lerach’s former partner in the firm, which said this week it expects Weiss to be indicted in the same federal investigation. But the always stylishly coiffured Tar Heel won’t suffer, because his campaign finance chairman is Fred Barron, a past president of AAJ/ATLA.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has attracted significant support among liability lawyers who previously supported Edwards. Kirk Wager, a Florida liability lawyer who headed the Kerry-Edwards Democratic presidential ticket’s fundraising there in 2004, is doing it now for Obama. And most members of the San Francisco-based Lawyers for Kerry have reorganized as Lawyers for Obama, according to Law.com.

Congressional candidates also benefit from the lawyers’ largesse. Of the top 20 recipients of lawyer campaign dollars in the 2006 Senate election cycle, 18 were Democrats, with Sen. Clinton leading the way, according to the CRP.

Contributions from lawyers and law firms in the 2006 congressional elections equaled $31 million in the House and $29 million in the Senate, according to CRP.

What do the liability lawyers get in return for their campaign cash? “The trial lawyer agenda is not as straightforward in terms of being identifiable,” said Sherman Joyce, president of the ATRA.

Even so, legislation sometimes fairly screams “boon for liabilities lawyers,” as with the proposed Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 that would remove time limits imposed on discrimination suits by the Supreme Court, a much-sought after goal for attorneys filing damage claims against big corporations, small businesses and government agencies.

Ledbetter has more than 90 Democratic co-sponsors. Opponents argue the proposal would create a revolving bank account for liability lawyers. The bill would allow “any individual who can arguably claim to be ‘affected’ by an allegedly discriminatory decision relating to compensation, wages, benefits — or any other practice — to sue for discrimination that may have occurred years or even decades in the past,” according to Republicans on the House Committee on Education and Labor.

Predictably, Democrats on the committee who are sponsoring the bill were recipients of substantial contributions from AAJ in the 2006 campaign, with committee chairman Rep. George Miller of California receiving $10,000, as did Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J.

Such contributions help explain why Alabama trial lawyer C. Gibson Vance so confidently told a Washington think tank seminar right after the 2006 election, according to National Journal, that “we are going to get things done.”

Mark Tapscott is the editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner. Cheryl K. Chumley is an independent journalist and researcher.

"Lawyers Gone Wild" is a series of special reports by The Examiner looking at the cost and consequences of class action lawsuit abuse in the United States. Read the latest articles in the series.