The Tortellini

The final price tag for Alabama's judicial election

Alabama started the trend of expensive and nasty judicial elections back in 1994, when Karl Rove applied his considerable political skills to swing the court from Democrat to Republican. The model was so successful that Republicans and business groups exported the model to other states, setting off something of an arms race in state supreme court elections. In 2004, the nation's most expensive race came in Illinois, ringing in at $9 million for a contested seat on the state high court. But apparently, Alabamans are holding fast to the championship title in judicial campaign spending. The Birmingham News reports that the five races for state supreme court last year cost more than $12 million, the most costly in the nation. Naturally, the bulk of the money came from insurance companies, banks, health care companies and myriad tort reform groups.

Dangerous doctors are not disappearing

Thanks to Jack in the comments section for bringing to my attention an amazing story in the Birmingham News this week that confirms my suspicions that doctors who get sued frequently are ones patients ought to avoid. The story profiles a doc who was sued more than 100 times in West Virginia in a single year and who had a long history of killing and maiming patients.

According to the story, after losing his license in several other states, the doctor turned up at a clinic in Birmingham and managed to nearly kill a woman who  had gone to see him for a simple skin infection by giving her an overdose of an anti-nausea medication. The stories from West Virginia are equally harrowing. One plaintiff alleges the doctor unnecessarily amputated her leg. The doctor allegedly performed unnecessary back surgery on another patient that resulted in a fatal infection. The complicity of the state medical boards and the hospitals and clinics who hired the doctor are themselves an argument for the continuing need for medical malpractice lawsuits.

When Arbitration Clauses Really Bug You

Insect infestations have led to some first-rate judicial decisions in this country, so it seems appropriate that our first entry in the "clause celebre" contest should be about bugs. This comes courtesy of Terry Carter at the ABA Journal, who wrote a story a few years back about some savvy Alabama residents who fended off an arbitration clause in an exterminator's contract. Here's an excerpt:

Homeowners Robert and Margo Rebar bought their stately suburban home in 2000....Cook's Pest Control certified that the house once had a termite infestation, but it was termite-free at sale. The couple soon learned the home they purchased from a lawyer had extensive termite damage. Cook's, which had been under contract for many years to inspect the home, added a binding arbitration clause to the agreement when it transferred to the Rebars.

The Rebars apparently went to a Birmingham lawyer [Thomas Campbell] known for tangling with termite companies before sending in their renewal. It was after that consultation that they put the addendum, chock-full of legalese, into the envelope with their check. The addendum stated in part: 'Notwithstanding prior amendments, nothing herein shall limit Customer's right to seek court enforcement (including injunctive or class relief in appropriate cases) nor shall anything herein abrogate Customer's right to trial by jury. Arbitration shall not be required for any prior or future dealings between Cook's and Customer.'

The Alabama supreme court ruled that when the bug company cashed the Rebars' check, it accepted the addendum, and the court allowed them to sue over the termite damage...

See Me, Hear Me

Speaking of Harold See...

Legendary political consultant Karl Rove helped put the Alabama justice on the bench in some of the nastiest and most expensive judicial elections on record (more on this in my forthcoming book). The Alabama court races foreshadowed many of the techniques Rove later used to put George W. Bush in the White House.

For instance, a former Rove staffer told Josh Green in the Atlantic Monthly that in See's 1994 race, someone from his camp started a whisper campaign that his opponent was a pedophile. See lost, but went on to defeat a guy who ran ads comparing him to a skunk in 1996. Rove's firm also handled See's ads in his 2000 Republican primary challenge against former chief justice Roy Moore, of Ten Commandments fame. The misleading and allegedly false ads prompted the state's judicial inquiry commission to charge See with violating the judicial cannons. (See lost the race but kept his old seat after the ethics charges were dropped.)

So today, as the Federalist Society lunch, I figured See would cite his bruising experience to support the new conservative calls for replacing judicial elections with merit appointments. Instead, See passionately defended elections and voters' ability to choose decent candidates. At least, he said, the process is more transparent than having the governor puts his college roommate on the bench.

See's faith in the average citizen's good sense, though, apparently doesn't extend to those in the jury box. I can't vouch for these numbers (consider the source) nor do I know how See voted in these cases, but according to Alabama trial lawyer Jere Beasley's monthly newsletter, of 31 cases decided by the Alabama Supreme Court in 2004 and 2005 where a victim won a case and a defendant appealed, the court upheld but four jury verdicts, or less than 8 percent.