Ann Callis' acsension as Madison County's chief judge has improved things there a bit, but the detritus of years of lawsuit abuse remains there--such as law firms specializing in asbestos suits.
Even more than most Democrats--and that's saying a lot--Joe Biden has been friends to trial lawyers, and twice the Delaware senator voted against bills that would have impacted the profits of law firms handling asbestos cases.
But it gets worse, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:
No firm's members in recent years have contributed more to Biden's efforts than those of SimmonsCooper LLC, which has branches in East Alton (My note: in Madison County), Chicago and El Segundo, Calif.
Since 2001, SimmonsCooper employees have contributed $196,050 to Biden's Senate and presidential campaigns.
The relationship between Biden's family and SimmonsCooper runs deeper than campaign donations. In 2005, as the Madison County Record originally reported, SimmonsCooper partnered on some of its asbestos cases with a Delaware firm that Biden's son Beau had just joined.
The Los Angeles Times reported recently that in 2006, Biden's brother James and youngest son, Hunter, secured a pledge for a $2 million investment from SimmonsCooper for a hedge fund company the Bidens wanted to purchase.
The Post-Dispatch reports that the Bidens collected half the investment from the law firm, but returned the cash when the deal fell apart.
Related post:
Judicial Hellholes list released
Technorati tags:
tort 
lawsuit 
legal 
law 
Illinois 
Metro East 
Bush 
Biden 
St. Louis 
Democrats 
asbestos
4 comments:
Excellent post. The Obama bin Biden ticket is clearly the trial bar's dream.
Who do you guys turn to when some corporation that funds all this anti-court system propaganda hurts you somehow ... poisoning your water, fouling your air, tainting your food... ?
Or do you just give up and get more and more sick?
There's a reason "trial lawyers" exist in America -- we have a right to fair trial in this country.
It's not entirely clear why you guys are against this basic American right, so perhaps you could explain your loathing of fair trials a bit better.
Fair trials.
Necessary litigation.
Do you know what those terms mean, Rob_n?
Trial lawyers...there some honest ones...but the majority of them only enrich themselves.
There are so man examples..for instance, John Edwards' channeling the thoughts of an infant with cerebral palsey, blaming the doctor for not giving the child not enough oxygen.
Cerebral palsey is a congetital disorder.
Once he made the big-time, Edwards would only take such cases where there was a surviving child--because deceased kids can't be placed in front of a jury to garner sympathy.
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