Whack-a-Mole 101 and other fun topics

Because tort reform isn't boring enough, I spent all day yesterday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's 7th annual Legal Reform Summit for the chamber's "Whack-a-Mole 101" series on trial lawyers.

From the press ghetto, where reporters were banned from asking any questions--a perk reserved for "paying customers"--I had an expansive view of the the expansive backside of this guy:

Shell Oil's gregarious corporate counsel Ed Pickle. Among the many other treats was a chemical company power-point presentation on the evils of lead paint litigation. I could tell you more about it if I'd been able to read the slides, but they were in something like 6-point type. (It's no wonder these guys are afraid of trials. No plaintiff lawyer worth his salt would ever torture a jury like this.)

During the luncheon, (a red-meat affair all the way), it was clear that trial lawyers give chamber prez Tom Donohue a reason to get up in the morning--that and raising money. Aside from bashing lawyers, Donohue was on hand to give out awards to people who'd zealously carried out the chamber's mission to make courts more business friendly.

Among them was Henry Butler, director of the AEI-Brookings Judicial Education Program. It took me a minute to recall that for many years, Butler ran the Law and Organizational Economic Center at the University of Kansas, a group funded largely by the right-wing Koch Foundation, the charitable arm of the nation's largest privately held oil and gas company.

With money from Koch and other corporate contributors, the LOEC held all-expense paid junkets for state court judges in swanky resorts like Sanibel Island, Fl. and Snowbird, Utah. In exchange for the poolside crab cakes, judges got indoctrinated in free-market economics. Presentations included one by Butler himself on "the costs of overdeterrence" by judges in environmental lawsuits. According to the Wall Street Journal (sub required), the syllabus explained that "many potentially hazardous activities offer great benefits to society." Some of the judges attending the seminars, incidentally, were overseeing environmental lawsuits against Koch Industries in Oklahoma.

The Kansas program fizzled out in 2002, but a year later, it resurfaced here in D.C. under the very moderate umbrella of the Brookings Institution. Still, it's hard to believe that the chamber would be giving the program an award if the seminars were encouraging judges to say, rethink "loss of consortium" claims to include grief over dead pets....