Trial lawyers on legislation offensive

Quin Hillyer:

Judging by recent headlines, the trial-lawyer lobby in Washington should be deep in bunkers, fighting a defensive action. High-profile class-action plaintiffs’ lawyers such as Dickie Scruggs, Bill Lerach, and Melvyn Weiss all have been convicted for various criminal offenses, and a federal judge unearthed major fraud among claimants in asbestosis lawsuits.

But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has found the bunkers empty and the trial bar more aggressive than ever. The Chamber sees the trial bar as having been reinvigorated. According to the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform (ILR), special provisions that would benefit plaintiffs’ attorneys are proliferating in Congress. Hence the ILR’s new Web page (reproduced here for illustration) lists 48 different pieces of legislation that ILR says are trial-lawyer specials. In most cases the American Association of Justice, formerly the America Trial Lawyer Association, has reported direct lobbying on the bills; in a few cases subcontractors of AAJ have done so.

“I think [trial lawyers] are definitely playing more offense in this Congress than in past years,” said ILR president Lisa Rickard. “It’s clear there is a concerted strategy to look for avenues to pass incremental reforms to expand liability. And they are often doing it in a way that is sort of behind the scenes and stuck into pieces of legislation you wouldn’t ordinarily expect to see liability legislation in.”

The Examiner tried repeatedly to solicit AAJ comment on whether it is more active now than in past Congresses. Press secretary Amaya Smith sent this e-mail response: “We are going to decline to comment on this story. Thanks for your call.”

Plaintiff-friendly language is clearly evident in a host of bills introduced in the past two years. Some trial-bar disputes have played out in public, such as the attempt to deny immunity protections to communications companies that aided in foreign intelligence/surveillance efforts. Many more are “stealthy” (as Rickard put it), such as the attempt to amend something called the False Claims Act (see accompanying story) and the attempt to use the bill reauthorizing the Coast Guard to make it easier to file class action suits against cruise-ship companies.

One provision in a much larger tax bill would let trial lawyers deduct certain expenses up front, at an estimated cost to the federal Treasury of $1.6 billion. Another would greatly expand opportunities for asbestos-based lawsuits, despite the recent scandal about thousands of earlier false claims for asbestosis.

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There is much more.

This is happening at a time when Democrats are blocking an investigation into trial lawyer abuses through class action suits. It is another reason why Democrats should be defeated at every opportunity this year.

Their relationship with the trial lawyers is one of codependency. Trial lawyers are their biggest contributors and those contributions buy legislation which makes it easier for the trial lawyers to extort money out of businesses to give ever greater contributions to Democrats. It is a racket that deserves exposure.