| For trial lawyers, the stakes are enormous beyond calculation this year
because the potential is there for tort reform to move from the extreme back
burner right up to the front depending on how a couple of elections go, said
Larry Makinson, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a
Washington nonprofit group advocating campaign finance reform. |
| Moreover, one prominent trial lawyer, Michael V. Ciresi of Minneapolis, who
represented the state of Minnesota in the tobacco litigation, was running for
the United States Senate in the Democratic primary there. Mr. Ciresi declined
to be interviewed. |
| If you had Bush in the White House and a Republican House, bingo, tort reform
would go to the top of the agenda, Mr. Makinson said. And the tobacco
settlement has been the pot of gold that has enabled trial lawyers to suddenly
have lots of capital behind them. |
| This year, though, the ill will has peaked. Trial lawyers have been gearing up
for new battles in Congress to pass a patients bill of rights and in the
courts against health maintenance organizations and the gun industry. |
| The Democratic haul was more than double the $1.12 million in soft money
donations from trial lawyers in 1995, the year prior to the last presidential
race. And, the largest portion of the 1999 money, $1.65 million, went to a
Democratic Party committee supporting Congressional candidates, reflecting the
view of many trial lawyers that a Democratically controlled House could halt
tort reform. |
