Bumperactive: Make A Custom Bumper Sticker!: The Ballad of John ''Trial Lawyer'' Edwards -- V.P.?
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The Junior Senator from North Carolina is crushing your head!


The Ballad of John ''Trial Lawyer'' Edwards -- V.P.?



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item posted 22:55:30: 07-14-04 by kyle.

The GOP Dogs-O-War have discovered their angle on Edwards -- well, dusted it off, s'more like it. Come November, expect to find the words "Trial Lawyer" appended to Edward's moniker in the national psyche like "Tax-and-Spend" is to "Democrat," "Slick" is to "Willie" and "Evil" is to... well pretty much everything these days. Hold your breath, you’ll be hearing a lot about a $30 million swimming-pool drain during the next 16 weeks....

On July 7, WSJ columnist Alan Murray wrote of the US Chamber of Commerce's decision to end its traditional stance of election neutrality and work feverishly to defeat the Democratic ticket. Murray quotes an unnamed Fortune 100 CEO as calling Edwards "The one we fear most" in the heyday of the Democratic primary -- meaning more than Kerry, Gephart or Dean. Murray writes:

[M]r. Edwards is a trial lawyer. His campaign for the presidency was financed by trial lawyers. And there is nothing that makes America's CEOs see red these days like America's trial lawyers. "It's visceral," says one person who works with a group of chief executives. "You can feel it in a room." The nation's top executives view the plaintiff's bar as modern-day mobsters, shaking down corporations by bringing endless lawsuits that are too costly and too dangerous to litigate and that result in settlements costing billions to the corporate bottom line. The antipathy, while not new, has never been greater.

Here's the Center for Public Integrity's sum-up of Edward's meteoric -- you say you were hit by a meteor? -- legal career from its excellent, ongoing, investigation of the money driving both parties, The Buying of the President. Profiles for Bush, Kerry and Cheney are also included -- still no satisfactory explanation for the Sammy Sosa trade, though.

In his 20 years as a lawyer, Edwards has a number of trophies he can boast. In at least 63 big cases, he won more than $152 million. His performance earned him an induction into the Inner Circle of Advocates, a society of 100 of the nations best lawyers (all of whom have won at least one case with an award worth $1 million) and a mention as one of Lawyer Weekly USA's "Lawyers of the Year" in 1996. His great fortune, earned from the cases he won, and a cornucopia of professional contacts that he amassed during his career permitted him to make his unexpected jump into the political realm.

It's an absolute boon for the Bushies -- instead of having to stammer around the stuttering economy, they can shout from the rooftops: Just think how much worse it’ll get if HE’s in here! But is the plaintiffs bar really to blame for -- among other things -- the skyrocketing cost of health care, tepid coffee at the drive thru, and the no-more-staff-meetings-at-the-titty-bar rule at work?

In today’s NY Newsday, columnist Marie Coco rustles up an impressive stack of Justice Department statistics -- a.k.a., the World According to Ashcroft -- to argue that the plaintiff's bar ain't nearly so bad as the prosecution suggests:

The number of civil trials in the nation's 75 largest counties dropped by 47 percent from 1992 to 2001. In jury trials in which the plaintiff was successful, the median award shrank from $65,000 in 1992 to $37,000 in 2001. Winning plaintiffs won punitive damages in only 6 percent of trials -- with the median punitive damage award $50,000.

Not enough to make you, or your lawyer, rich.

Anyway, the president doesn't worry about the run-of-the-mill car accident case - though 60 percent of tort lawsuits involve automobiles, according to the National Center for State Courts. Nor is he concerned with the mundane slip-and-fall suit (17 percent of cases).

It's those oversized damage awards and over-the-top class actions that have his dander up.

But the largest damage award turns out to have been granted not in some liberal bastion but in Bush's home state of Texas. The award was indeed huge - $454 million, reduced to $121 million on appeal. Did this go to a child poisoned by toxic drinking water? No. It went to a Texas company that won a contract dispute with Mexican partners who'd broken a franchise deal.

And how many class-action suits turned up in the Justice Department's survey of 12,000 concluded trials? One.

It was against an insurance company that had changed the job classification of its claims representatives to "administrative" personnel - a switch that exempted the company from paying overtime. The employees won $124.5 million in uncompensated overtime and interest, to split among 2,400 workers and their lawyers.

Now, maybe these folks are greedy. But what would you call the lawyers who cooked up the job-title scam? Campaign contributors, maybe.

*snip*
There's a mountain of evidence that should get the political case against trial lawyers dismissed. It probably won't. Few arguments are as powerful as a populist-sounding cause backed by the corporate wallet.


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