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Trial lawyers seek return on contributions to Senate Democrats
By: David Freddoso and Kevin Mooney
San Francisco Examiner
08/13/09 8:27 PM PDT
In February, just two months before he became a Democrat, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania made a passionate plea for a special tax break for plaintiffs' trial lawyers. His bill, S 437, would allow trial lawyers to deduct immediately on their taxes up-front expenses they incur when investing in contingency lawsuits.
The tax break is reportedly worth $1.6 billion to trial lawyers. If Specter’s amendment passes, this single provision would more than repay the legal industry for its roughly $762 million in political contributions to Democrats over the last two decades.
Which would, in turn, mean more money could be recycled and funneled back to Democrats.
An Examiner analysis of the 15 firms on the National Law Journal's "2008 Plaintiff's Hot List" shows that for 2009, their employees have contributed $636,305 to federal politicians and PACs. Only $4,875 of that amount has gone to Republicans, meaning that the nation's top trial lawyers are giving more than 99 percent Democratic this year. The PAC for the American Association of Justice, the top trial lawyer lobbying group, has been marginally more balanced, giving Democrats a mere 96 percent of its $627,000 in contributions.
These trial lawyers are especially concentrating on the Senate. Members of those same 15 firms have given $236,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this year. And trial lawyers know that the Senate is controlled by one of their own -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who faces a potentially difficult re-election. Reid has taken in some $54,000 from the top 15 firms. According to OpenSecrets, he has taken $978,000 from the legal industry as a whole.
Specter, a trial-lawyer-turned-prosecutor-turned-Senator, is the eighth most popular senator among the legal lobby, taking $309,000 from the industry so far this year.
Trial lawyers' generosity toward favored Democrats in 2009 comes on the heels of a difficult 2008 for members of the profession. Four senior partners of Milberg Weiss, the infamous New York firm that for years filed the most class-action lawsuits, pleaded guilty and received federal prison sentences and/or fines after admitting guilt in a conspiracy to pay nearly $12 million in bribes to plaintiffs in hundreds of such suits, beginning in 1979. The suits generated an estimated $250 million in attorneys' fees for the firm.
(Milberg employees have made $36,537 in political contributions this year, with every penny going to Democrats -- $3,048 to Reid and $30,389 to the DSCC.)
Also last year, Mississippi trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs confessed to offering a $50,000 bribe to a state judge and was sentenced to a five-year prison sentence. Scruggs became famous for his work that led to the 1998 Master Tobacco Settlement that netted 52 plaintiffs trial lawyer firms more than $1.2 billion in fees.
And former Sen. John Edwards, who before being elected made a fortune suing doctors, admitted in August of 2008 to having an affair with a female campaign contractor during his run for president. Federal investigators are now probing a $100,000 payment by the Edwards campaign to the woman.
Editor's note: This post has been changed to reflect the correct timing of John Edwards' admission of his affair.
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