| 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. |
| Of course, the animosity between trial lawyers and Mr. Bush went back further
than Mr. Bushs candidacy, extending to his father. Many remembered President
George Bushs derision of trial lawyers in their tasseled loafers during the
1992 campaign, and the words still smarted. |
| To trial lawyers, especially those involved in the tobacco litigation, Mr. Bush
has become their worst nightmare. He has made attacks on lawyers a campaign
centerpiece, pointing with pride to his record in Texas of curbing civil
litigation, capping legal fees and limiting jury awards. |
| I will do whatever necessary to see that candidates who espouse the position
that Bush does are defeated at the polls. ?Trial Lawyer Peter G. Angelos
(Leslie Wayne, Trial Lawyers Tap Their Profits from Tobacco Lawsuits to Fight
the Republicans, The New York Times, March 23, 2000) (emphasis added) |
| While money from trial lawyers has gone to all kinds of Democratic committees,
the lawyers have made it clear that their No. 1 target was Mr. Bush. Last
month, Mr. Bush issued a five-point plan to curb frivolous lawsuits and said
he wanted to expand nationwide efforts that he had pushed in Texas that he said
had saved Texas businesses $3 billion by reducing civil litigation. |
