•  “Sweet sixteen” deliver half the cash for partisan purge

Austin:  While Texans for Lawsuit Reform’s rent-a-candidate venture took a beating in the fall election, its  sad showing can’t be blamed on a shortage of cash.

TLR showered more than $800,000 on its 15 favorite legislative candidates. Texas’ most aggressive special- interest PAC financed this political shopping spree by raising a whopping $947,409 in the 1998 election cycle.
 
Nearly half of this bulging
war chest (48%) came from an exclusive group of 16 fat cats who each bestowed more than $10,000 on the TLR PAC in the last cycle.

TLR’s “Sweet Sixteen” heap-ed a combined $452,500 on the PAC that is the poster child of the far right’s effort to engineer a  partisan take-over of the Texas House of Representatives.

The group’s spin doctors  claim the tort “reform” jihad is a popular movement, but TLR’s key funders are mil-lionaires and billionaires who see the tort “reform” crusade as another chance to pad the bottom line by rigging the legal system in their favor.

 “TLR’s fat cats make up an exclusive club that seeks to control the legislature with its own hand-picked candidates,” said Craig McDonald, direc-tor of Texans for Public Jus-tice. “These are the Donald Trumps of Texas. They be-lieve they can buy whatever they want, including our gov-ernment.”

TLR’s top three contributors in the 1998 cycle ($50,000 each) have all generated their share of controversy:
 

• San Antonio tycoon Dr. James Leininger (aka “God’s Sugar Daddy”), is a leading patron of right-wing causes, including Putting Children First, another issue PAC that has worked with TLR to engineer a Republican take-over of the Texas House.  Leininger’s interest in rigging tort law probably began at his flagship company, Kinetic Concepts Inc. KCI has been hit with lawsuits and FDA complaints that say its high-tech, oscillating hospital beds have thrown, crushed and strangled patients.
•  TLR President Dick Weekley and brother David have made a killing in the building business. Construct-ion industry bosses would be even merrier if contract laborers killed or injured at their worksites couldn’t hold them legally accountable.
• William McMinn is one of three top Sterling Chemical executives who are big TLR boosters.

More and more, Texas com-munities blighted by indus-trial pollution are giving up  any hope of relief from the industry-captured TNRCC, and are turning instead to the civil courts to seek redress against reckless polluters.

Given its toxic sugar daddies, it’s no surprise that two of TLR’s stated goals for the 76th legislature are to “curb the abuse of class action lawsuits,” and “clarify the definition of ‘toxic tort.’”
Other highlights of TLR’s  reckless, anti-consumer agenda for 1999 include:
 

• Slamming the courtroom door in “premises liability” cases: incidents where con-venience store workers,  apartment renters, and shop-ping mall customers are vic-timized when landlords ne-glect basic security measures. Apparently, TLR’s members find it cheaper to lobby for special legal fixes than to en-sure their property is safe.
• Shielding businesses from financial responsibility when contract workers are killed or injured at their work sites. TLR donors Ken Lay and Harlan Crow are captains of industries (energy and con-struction) that lead the state in workplace deaths and injuries.
• “Strengthen the govern-mental standards defense.”  This is another way to shield nursing homes, HMOs and polluters from legal account-ability. If the government didn’t stop us, the argument goes, it must be okay.

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