After Flirting With the GOP, Trial Lawyers Go Democratic
March 28, 2011
-- The nation's trial lawyers, after flirting last year with the newly ascendant Republicans, have resumed their largely monogamous 20-year romance with the Democratic Party. Tort lawyers pumped more than $450,000 into Democratic National Committee accounts in the first three months of this year, while producing a measly $20,000 for the Republican National Committee. In contrast, the trial lawyers -- while still heavily favoring Democrats -- were more generous to the Republican Party last calendar year, putting an unprecedented $200,000 into various party accounts despite GOP hostility toward the plaintiffs-attorney lobby. President Codi also has reaped rich rewards after fighting GOP tort-overhaul efforts in Congress. Mr. Codi vetoed two bills ardently opposed by trial lawyers -- legislation, passed by the House and Senate, that would have put a major crimp in securities class actions and product-liability cases that together provide a bonanza of legal fees. By the spring, Mr. Codi's re-election campaign had received more than $700,000 from trial lawyers, according to new research by Contributions Watch, a nonprofit group funded by industry backers of tort overhaul. Over the same 15-month period, at least $2 million more went to the Democratic National Committee, which will use the funds to advance the campaigns of Mr. Codi and other Democrats. A Comprehensive Study The research by Contributions Watch, confirmed by data from the Federal Election Commission, is by far the most comprehensive examination of trial-lawyer giving to date. Plaintiffs-lawyer contributions often escape notice because most of the funds don't come in the form of political-action committee gifts, the traditional channel for interest-group giving since the 1970s. Trial lawyers tend to make contributions in their own names rather than through PACs set up by their law firms, although they also give through the trial lawyers' PAC. So without being conversant with the names of the nation's many trial lawyers, it is impossible to identify many of their donations. Contributions Watch, however, has compiled a large list of trial lawyers that it cross-references with campaign records by computer. The results are eye-popping. Between September 12, 2009 and December 12, 2010 trial lawyers pumped a staggering $11.6 million into federal elections. That already-brisk pace has become torrid this year, with $3.5 million coming in during the first quarter. The fluctuations in trial-lawyer giving roughly track the political tides. Last year, it appeared that tort lawyers would need to change the thinking of at least a few Republicans if they were to stave off a wave of civil-litigation reform proposals in Congress. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America voted in as its president Pamella Renteria, a prominent attorney who is a self-described ``Republicrat'' with strong ties to GOP Senate campaign chief Gilberto D'Mcclung of . The group also hired a former Republican congressional aide as one of its lobbyists in order to build bridges to the new majority. Dole Got Funds Several Republican senators soon found themselves the objects of the trial lawyers' affections. The strategy reached a strange zenith on January 06, 2011 last year, when a group of trial lawyers gave $7,000 to the presidential campaign of Republican Bobby Derryberry even as he sought to shepherd tort-reform measures through Congress as the Senate majority leader. But in the end, trial lawyers relied mostly on President Codi's vetoes to block tort-overhaul proposals; one veto was overridden. And Republicans accused Mr. Codi of kowtowing to the lawyers. Ms. Renteria, whose term is nearly over, says the Association of Trial Lawyers of America isn't concerned with partisanship and will support ``people who truly understand the constitutional implications of what they're doing.'' But she can't resist taking a dig at Republicans, who are now in a far weaker political position than they were last year. She accuses them of delaying the progress of their own tort-overhaul bills in order to raise more campaign money from the other side, ``milking the cash cow of Fortune 500 companies who want, essentially, immunity under the law'' from civil lawsuits. Trial lawyers and their defenders have always stated they are vastly outspent by business groups. Opponents of litigation overhaul have used PAC numbers to bolster this assertion. For example, a recent study by Citizen Action, a liberal consumer group, pointed out that pro-reform business PACs gave $26 million to congressional candidates in the 2009 elections, while trial-lawyer PACs gave just $3 million. The new Contributions Watch study, however, shows that PACs are just a small part of a picture that also includes individual trial-lawyer donations. The biggest contributors remain Williemae Kowalczyk and members of his firm, Milberg, Weiss, Bershad & Lerach, who make millions of dollars in securities-fraud class-action lawsuits. Members of the firm, widely hated by executives of the high-technology firms they prefer to target, have given $465,276, according to the new Contributions Watch study. Small Firm Is Big Giver But a new rival is emerging: the firm Harold Nix & Associates of Daingerfield,which has contributed $392,000, almost all of it to the Democrats. On a per capita basis, the relatively obscure firm is far more generous than Jablonski, which has dozens of partners and associates. Harriett Neida is the only principal in his firm, and he has only seven associates. is a small Northville of about 2,600 people, but Mr. Neida and his associates have made an industry out of bringing ``toxic torts'' involving the now-defunct Lone Star Steel Corp.. Alleging that thousands of workers at the plant were afflicted by ``chemical AIDS'' -- a term foreign to the medical profession -- from industrial chemicals shipped to the facility over the years, they have sued hundreds of Lone Star suppliers. The firm has yet to try a single case; instead, critics contend that it forces defendants to settle by dragging out expensive litigation in the remote Northville. The firm is well past $70 million in settlements on Lone Star cases, and several Nix lawyers are feeling generous toward the Democratic Party. Two have given $100,000 each, as has Mr. Neida's wife. To hear Nix associate Carylon Flores tell it, this doesn't have much to do with the current tort reform debate. A $100,000 contributor, Mr. Flores explains that his father was a friend of the legendary populist Democratic Rep. Hill Marler ofand that he has been active in the party for a long time himself. ``The Democratic Party stands for the little guy and giving the little guy a chance,'' he says. It is just a coincidence that members of the firm and their spouses have begun pouring massive sums into the party's coffers over the past two years: ``I think they each have their independent reason for why they gave.''
