Tribune: A Vote Of Confidence For Supreme Court Justice Lloyd Karmeier
From the Chicago Tribune
Ten years ago, an election to fill a vacancy on the Illinois Supreme Court turned into a high-stakes proxy war between businesses and the lawyers who make a living suing them.
Democrat Gordon Maag, an appellate court judge who has since retired, and Republican Lloyd Karmeier, then a circuit court judge, spent a combined $9.3 million on the race. It was widely viewed as a referendum on abuses of the state's civil justice system, particularly in the plaintiff-friendly 5th Judicial District, which covers 37 Southern Illinois counties.
Trial lawyers broke out the checkbooks for Maag; business interests and tort-reform groups did the same for Karmeier. Karmeier won.
Now Karmeier is seeking voter approval to stay on the court, and plaintiffs' lawyers have thrown at least $1.3 million into a furious, late-breaking campaign to defeat him. The reason for their crusade: He joined other members of the Supreme Court in decisions that overturned a $10.1 billion judgment against cigarette-maker Philip Morris and a $1 billion judgment against State Farm.
The lawyers don't like the way the Supreme Court ruled. They want to buy themselves a different Supreme Court.
That is, a court that might rule differently in the Philip Morris and State Farm cases. Both of the cases are still alive. The Philip Morris case, a class-action suit accusing the tobacco company of falsely advertising its "light" cigarettes as less harmful than full-flavor brands, has found its way back to the Supreme Court.
Read more in our daily News Update...
From the Chicago Tribune
Ten years ago, an election to fill a vacancy on the Illinois Supreme Court turned into a high-stakes proxy war between businesses and the lawyers who make a living suing them.
Democrat Gordon Maag, an appellate court judge who has since retired, and Republican Lloyd Karmeier, then a circuit court judge, spent a combined $9.3 million on the race. It was widely viewed as a referendum on abuses of the state's civil justice system, particularly in the plaintiff-friendly 5th Judicial District, which covers 37 Southern Illinois counties.
Trial lawyers broke out the checkbooks for Maag; business interests and tort-reform groups did the same for Karmeier. Karmeier won.
Now Karmeier is seeking voter approval to stay on the court, and plaintiffs' lawyers have thrown at least $1.3 million into a furious, late-breaking campaign to defeat him. The reason for their crusade: He joined other members of the Supreme Court in decisions that overturned a $10.1 billion judgment against cigarette-maker Philip Morris and a $1 billion judgment against State Farm.
The lawyers don't like the way the Supreme Court ruled. They want to buy themselves a different Supreme Court.
That is, a court that might rule differently in the Philip Morris and State Farm cases. Both of the cases are still alive. The Philip Morris case, a class-action suit accusing the tobacco company of falsely advertising its "light" cigarettes as less harmful than full-flavor brands, has found its way back to the Supreme Court.
Read more in our daily News Update...