I got a copy of a fascinating Motion filed this week in the Texas Supreme Court. In the Motion, a Plaintiff's lawyer in a mandamus case asks 4 Justices to recuse themselves from hearing the case because they have evidenced a bias for big business and insurance companies, and a prejudice against Plaintiffs who sue for money damages. Backing up the Motion is an independent study of voting patterns that shows that these four judges have never voted to allow a Plaintiff to recover money -- reversing every single award that they have reviewed in an appellate case.
Although the lawyer here is relying solely on voting patterns, he makes a nod in the Motion to the Court's practice of reviewing the factual sufficiency of the evidence to support jury verdicts in favor of Plaintiffs under the guise of discussing the law -- a practice that is undeniably common, and just as undeniably prohibited by the Texas Constitution.
Obviously, the Motion will be denied, and the 4 judges will participate in the case. But, this makes speculating on judicial elections a bit more interesting. Will the public ever learn of this? Will opponents come forward to make this a campaign issue? Will Texas actually vote that this is the kind of Supreme Court that they want? The Dallas Morning News actually published an article about this, on the front page of its business section.
Stay tuned.
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2 comments:
Yeah, um, this made my day!
I think this is evidence that electing judges, thereby giving big business and insurance companies allowance to donate to campaigns, makes for poor judges. After all, if you can only get 30% of the U.S. to come out and vote for the President, when few of them are actually aware of what sort of decisions they can expect the newly-elected President to make, how can you expect them to pay attention to voting patterns in the Texas Supreme Court? Since it is only the insurance companies and special interest groups who actually make an effort to influence court opinions, taking campaign money out of the equation would certainly be an easy reform.
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