Trial Lawyers PREP For WAR On PERRY

[Segami]

.
:bounce: :smoke: :bounce: :smoke:



" America’s trial lawyers are getting ready to make the case against one of their biggest targets in years: Texas Gov. Rick Perry.


Among litigators, there is no presidential candidate who inspires the same level of hatred – and fear – as Perry, an avowed opponent of the plaintiffs’ bar who has presided over several rounds of tort reform as governor. And if Perry ends up as the Republican nominee for president, deep-pocketed trial lawyers intend to play a central role in the campaign to defeat him. That’s a potential financial boon to a president who has unsettled trial lawyers with his own rhetorical gestures in the direction of tort reform. A general election pitting Barack Obama against Perry could turn otherwise apathetic trial lawyers into a phalanx of pro-Obama bundlers and super PAC donors.




“If this guy emerges, if he’s a serious candidate, if he doesn’t blow up in the next couple weeks, it’s going to motivate many in the plaintiffs’ bar to dig deeper to support President Obama,” said Sean Coffey, a former securities litigator who ran for attorney general of New York last year. “That will end up driving a lot of money to the Democratic side.” Some attorneys don’t intend to wait and see how Perry fares in the GOP primaries.




Democratic Houston trial lawyer Steve Mostyn – who, along with his wife, Amber, donated nearly $9 million to Texas candidates and party committees in the 2010 cycle – said he’s in the process of forming “some federal PACs” to take on Perry. That will likely include a federal super PAC that could take in the kind of massive donations that are permitted in Texas. Mostyn said his political spending wouldn’t just center on the trial lawyers’ agenda. “The legal issues are important and near and dear to my heart,” Mostyn told POLITICO. “But more important is the myth that we’re doing great down here, when we’re not. We’re falling behind the rest of the country, and the country is falling behind the rest of the world.”




But the “legal issues,” as Mostyn calls them, are far more than incidental to the hostile relationship between Perry and trial attorneys. The governor has pushed through a string of tort reform laws, including a 2003 measure putting a monetary cap on non-economic damage awards. He passed another law in the most recent Texas legislative session, making it easier to dismiss some lawsuits and putting plaintiffs on the hook for legal costs in certain cases that are defeated or dismissed.





cont'



http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61807.html



.

[catabryna]

1. Glad to hear it, though I wouldn't expect anything less...

Go get 'em! :thumbsup:

[lindysalsagal]

2. Perry is such a fool. If I were Texan, I'd be so embarrassed. n/t.

[Segami]

3. This guy makes ' W ' look sane.