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1/7/2009
Wednesday morning
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| Over all, trial lawyers raised $2.7 million in soft money donations for
Democrats in 1999, of a total of $49.4 million in soft dollars raised so far by
the party, according to a recent report from Common Cause, a Washington
nonprofit group. (By contrast, the Republicans got $2,800 in soft money from
trial lawyers, Common Cause reported, of $57.8 million in soft dollars over
all.) |
| Nonetheless, the American Tort Reform Foundation, a branch of the lobbying
group, has set up a Web site, www.triallawyermoney.org, to follow trial lawyer
donations called Tracking Trial Lawyers. The group has listed the biggest
trial lawyer donors as well as the biggest recipients of their largess --
basically a list of Democratic Party committees and candidates. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Now that they have triumphed over the tobacco industry, trial lawyers have
found a new target, Gov. George W. Bush, and they have been spending huge
amounts of money from the tobacco settlement to keep him and other Republicans
from being elected. |
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