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Trial lawyers buy Democrats in Congress
...Since Jan. 3, 2009, 581 contributions worth $1,261,023 have been made by donors identifying themselves as employees of the 15 firms (contributions by employees who did not identify their employer are not reflected in this data). Democratic candidates and committees received $1,241,978, or 98 percent of the total. The most generous of these lucrative sources of Democratic campaign cash was the Dallas-based Baron & Budd, best known for the late Fred Baron, who was finance chairman for former Sen. John Edwards' 2008 presidential run. Thus far in 2009, Baron & Budd employees have contributed $212,958 to 21 Democrats, and not a cent to Republicans. Second on the list is the New York-based Grant Eisenhofer firm, with employees contributing $184,078 to seven Democrats and no Republicans. Of the 138 total recipients from employees of all 15 of the firms, 122 were Democrats and just 16 were Republicans. The Democrats received contributions averaging more than $4,700, while the GOPers averaged $646.

Has the investment paid off? Besides preventing the inclusion of medical malpractice reform, the Democratic majority in Congress has included multiple trial lawyer earmarks in the House version of Obamacare. Section 257 authorizes state attorneys general to sue companies that violate any federal health care provision and to delegate the work of such suits to class-action plaintiffs' firms. Another trial lawyer earmark in the bill pays states not to enact caps on attorneys' fees or lawsuit settlements.

Besides provisions of Obamacare, class-action trial lawyers are getting their money's worth in other ways. The Ledbetter bill signed by President Obama overturned a Supreme Court ruling upholding deadlines for plaintiffs to file class-action lawsuits, thus clearing the way for class-action suits to be filed years after alleged damages supposedly occur.

Among the pending bills that favor the trial attorneys is one to allow "guilt-by-association" class-action suits against firms doing business with a defendant company. These examples only skim the surface of what Democrats have been doing for their trial lawyer friends this year, but it's enough to make clear the trial bar knows where to invest its settlement fees....