A number of you have sent in the link to Raw Story’s new in-depth article Justice for Sale: How Big Tobacco and the GOP teamed up to crush Democrats in the South.
Whatever your partisan alignment, whatever your perceptions of such figures as Karl Rove, Paul Minor, Oliver Diaz, Dunn Lampton, Trent Lott, Haley Barbour, Don Siegelman, and Ronnie Musgrove — and of corporations’ and trial lawyers’ proper role in our political and legal processes — I encourage you to pour a fresh cup of coffee and read this. News-to-me (though I knew of them in general) was how the specific connections between Rove, Barbour, Lott, and Big Tobacco led to getting Mississippi’s “tort reform” revolution accomplished.
Read, then we can discuss . . .
The story is a little one sided. I’m sure some of the allegations are true and others are not. Likewise, the article pins tort reform in MS solely on the tobacco issue, when that is not the case. Lawsuit abuses were rampant in many areas of the law during that time, and in certain counties. All in all, an informative read though.
If big tobacco was responsible for the tort reform we received then you have to say, they at least did something good. Do the people on this blog believe that Paul Minor is innocent? Seems to me a long standing practice of securing judges loans means he was buying favors for a long time, and became quite wealthy for his efforts! Was he not in the same political PAC with AG Hoods close as “family” friends who are now known felons?
The Democrats are going to have to find more deep pockets to fund the elections. Minor and the others that used the system to their benefit are not going to be able to bankroll their efforts in the future.
msbroker, the article points out:
“During the second trial, presiding Judge Henry Wingate excluded evidence showing that Minor had a long-established pattern of offering loans or loan guarantees to his friends in the legal community, thus creating the appearance that Minor had helped the three judges in hopes of receiving something in return.”
If these were judges that Minor had tried to bribe why on earth would his lawyers want to enter it as evidence?
Also, an older article that dovetails with the rawstory one is here: Jackson Free Press.
Duckweed, you must have linked the wrong article… as nothing to do with Minor? Minor went to court and came out a felon…. did your court system let him down? I guess Dickey was railroaded too?
There was one great aspect to tort reform in MS that was badly needed — the relief given to pharmacies and doctors in cases alleging defective drugs. In these cases, before tort reform, the lawyers would sue not only the manufacturers of the drugs, but the prescribing doctors and the pharmacies who filled the prescriptions or sold the over the counter medicines. Now, after tort reform, they can only sue the doctors and pharmacies IF there is proof of actual negligence, or IF the manufacturer of the product is insolvent. No more suits against the pharmacies and doctors for merely being in the chain of sale of the product.
My mother’s pharmacy business was sued almost a dozen times within a 1 1/2 year time span, simply for being in the chain of sale of certain prescription and non-prescription over the counter drug products (eg Alkaseltzer Plus, Tylenol, etc. ) . Each time she had to report the suit to her insurer and counsel had to be retained –thank goodness her son was a lawyer. She lost her insurance due to all of these claims and had to acquire new insurance with a new company at much higher premiums. Not one of those suits had ANY merit at all with respect to the allegations involving her business. Not one. All were resolved with no liability being imposed upon my mother’s business. But, she and her insurance carrier did have to incur legal fees.
In one of them, filed by a Texas lawyer, the alleged “deceased” plaintiff , whose estate claim was being filed by the deceased’s daughter, alleged that the deceased died as a result of purchasing a defective product from my mom’s business. After receiving service of the suit, I received a call from my mom stating that she had witnessed a “miracle” as the alleged “deceased” had just walked into the drugstore to purchase her medicines and shop as she normally did —very much appearing to be alive. And to top it off, she knew nothing about the suit. I am not making this up. After a very sarcastic and stern letter written to the Texas lawyer (I wish I had saved it —it was a hoot), assuring him that if the suit was not dismissed by the end of that busines day, I would be calling the Bar office to file a complaint and would seek Rule 11 sanctions against him and his local counsel, he agreed to voluntarily dismiss the suit.
This is the kind of crap that was going on and that the folks of MS were having to deal with. “Big Tobacco” had nothing to do with much of the tort reform in MS. Abuse of the legal process by lawyers DID.