Normally, I wouldn’t bother commenting on a race like this because I’m not qualified to comment on their qualifications. In this case, however, one thing that I am qualified to comment on is the attempt by the religious right of Houston to tear down Justice Jeff Brown and build up the Reagan conservative. That seems rather odd to me until I thought about if for a moment and looked into it further.
Why would Terry Lowry give Rick Green two full pages in his Link Letter for the small sum, in his world, of $2,500? That doesn’t make sense and might even be against the law. ELECTION CODE Sec. 255.002. RATES FOR POLITICAL ADVERTISING states:
(b) The rate charged for political advertising that is printed or published may not exceed the lowest charge made for comparable use of the space for any other purposes.
So the lowest charge for a full page ad in the Link Letter should be $1,250, right? Yet Jim Moseley, in the same race, paid $10,000. Oh, I’m sure there are some manipulations that Mr. Lowry has made to fall just under the letter of the law but it sure seems like the spirit of the law has been broken. In my opinion, of course, because I’m not accusing Mr. Lowry of wrongdoing.
One of the two pages of support for Mr. Green is a letter from David Barton of Wallbuilders. Mr. Barton is one of the architects behind the taking over of the Republican Party by far right religious social conservatives. He, along with Rick Scarborough of Vision America, Steven Hotze, Lowry, Mark Lanier, and many others like the power controlling the party gives them.
What does this have to do with Justice Jeff Brown, you ask? Plenty. I was curious how a local judge from the Houston/Harris County area, where many of the religious right reside, would not be endorsed or supported by these guys. Justice Brown has impeccable credentials and is endorsed by a who’s who of political and legal operatives. Except…the religious right that has enjoyed controlling the HCRP since the late nineties. Why would that be?
As with anything else in life, follow the money. One of Terry Lowry’s biggest financial supporters is Mark Lanier, a successful plaintiff’s trial attorney that dabbles as a part-time preacher. He is also a fan of YouTube, with several videos talking about his slaying of the giants. In fact, there are several of these plaintiff attorney types in the HCRP, including the current chairman, Jared Woodfil. I didn’t pay much attention to this until Mr. Woodfill placed one of them on the panel for his sham of a “Health Care Town Hall” last year. The guys name was Robert Painter and the panel was a joke. I wrote about it here.
Okay, fine, you say. Mr. Lanier supports Terry Lowry, who endorsed Rick Green. And the HCRP is full of plaintiff attorneys. So?
So…Steven Hotze also endorsed Rick Green. But Mr. Hotze also did something else that gives us a clue as to what is going on here. Here is an op-ed that Mr. Hotze wrote:
What has happened to Republican judges? A panel of three Republican judges — Adele Hedges, Jeff Brown and John Anderson of the 14th Court of Appeals in Houston — overturned a jury award for the widow of a man who the jury decided had been killed by the drug Vioxx.
Vioxx is an anti-inflammatory drug for joint pain manufactured by Merck.
These judges ignored a cardinal principle of American jurisprudence: The jury is the fact finder, the determiner of whose evidence is correct. Judges may not change the jury’s findings except in the rarest of circumstances.
The 7th Amendment to the U.S Constitution reads as follows: “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed $20, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”
Bob Ernst was a healthy fitness advocate who died from a heart attack after taking Vioxx daily for eight months. He was a marathon runner who ran five days per week and rode a bicycle 10 miles daily. Bob ate healthy and disdained junk food. His cholesterol, blood pressure and weight were all in the healthy range.
Bob’s widow sued Merck for causing Bob’s death in State District Court in Angleton. The trial judge was a Republican, and 11 of the jury members were Republican voters. This was not a plaintiff’s jury.
Yet after listening to 27 days of testimony, the jury found that Merck had consistently concealed the truth of Vioxx’ danger, misrepresented the facts to the FDA and deceived both the FDA and the physicians to whom it marketed its product.
Bob’s widow was awarded $24 million and punitive damages of $229 million. Punitive damages are awarded to punish a defendant who was aware that his actions were causing harm but continued to do them anyway.
Merck had been aware of the heart risks posed by Vioxx prior to receiving FDA approval to market it in 1999, yet it hid this information.
Scientists at the FDA have estimated that about 150,000 people suffered heart attacks caused by Vioxx and that nearly 60,000 died between 1999 and 2004.
Merck knew of this problem but kept Vioxx on the market because it was generating $2.5 billion in sales annually. The jury found that these sales were generated by false marketing of the product to consumers and physicians.
Merck was forced to pull Vioxx off the market in 2004. It recently settled a class action lawsuit for $4.5 billion.
Yet the Republican judges on the 14th Court of Appeals sided with the pharmaceutical giant Merck and reversed the decision for the widow of Bob Ernst and left her empty handed.
It’s high time that we elect judges who will uphold justice for the common man and not side with the corporations who want no liability for their corrupt actions.
Guess who one of those three “activist” judges was? Hmm? C’mon, you can do it! Guess! That’s right, boys and girls, Justice Jeff Brown! Now, we are getting somewhere. Why? Because someone forwarded me this email that Mark Lanier sent out:
To my friends,
If you are getting this message, it means you are in my email directory! If it bothers you to get a “political email” please excuse me and delete this now! If not, then thank you so much for taking the time to read this message. I know that we share the same pro-family and individual values that we strive to instill in our families and society, which is why I am taking this unprecedented effort to send this email to all of my friends.
As early voting begins and the primary elections approach, I feel as though we must all take the time and effort to vote for the absolute best candidate for every politically contested election. I have never before sent out an email endorsing or opposing any political candidate. This year is different.
In the open seat on the Texas Supreme Court Place 3, we are faced with the choice of six republican candidates. I firmly believe that we must elect judges that follow the law, rule on the law, and do not take the steps to become activist judges. Our legislators make the law and judges are elected to apply the law. This very basic principal is founded in both our Texas and U.S. Constitutions for a separation of powers.
Today, for the first time in my life, I take the exceptional steps of asking each of you to actually vote against a particular candidate — Jeff Brown.
While sitting on a lower court, Jeff Brown has exhibited the type of activism that we firmly stand against and cannot afford to have on the highest court in our beloved State. I have witnessed his personal activism and gross injustice when he replaced pro-family jury decisions with his own opinion – contrary to the charge and duties we expect — and deserve — from our conservative, elected judges.
He gets “qualified” marks from Harris County Bar polls but do not be fooled by those. Only a few dozen lawyers argue before him each year. His “qualified” votes comes from the thousands of lawyers that work at the few very large firms that typically represent the very interests Judge Brown consistently puts before pro-family issues.
There are five other conservative candidates running for Place 3 on the Texas Supreme Court. We have a responsibility to our children, our families, and our state to make sure that we elect the best candidate possible to promote the pro-family and conservative values that we hold dear.
That choice is NOT judicial activist Jeff Brown.
Thank you for your time and your attention. May God Bless you in your decisions.
Mark
P.S. Please share these concerns with your email connections!
Heh. I’m sharing, Mr. Lanier. I’m sharing.
Are you starting to get closer to understanding what is going on here? No? Let me help you:
The Lanier Law Firm is announcing its plans to appeal a decision issued today by the 14th Court of Appeals in Brazoria County in favor of Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck & Co. . In the ruling, the court overturned a jury’s determination that the controversial painkiller Vioxx caused the death of a 59-year-old triathlete who died after taking the drug for less than nine months.
“Activist judges are protecting corporate executives and stripping away the rights of widows and every other victim of corporate misconduct. We are filing an appeal,” says attorney Mark Lanier, lead counsel for plaintiff Carol Ernst and founder of The Lanier Law Firm. “This decision was handed down by a group of judges who regularly accept campaign contributions from law firms representing corporations that appear in their courts. We will appeal this decision to the United States Supreme Court if necessary.”
Now are you getting the picture? The decision by the three judge panel cost Mr. Lanier a quarter of a billion dollar jury award. That’s not pocket change, my friends.
But…what about the decision? Surely it was because of activist judges, right? Wrong. Here is another op-ed, one that Mr. Hotze doesn’t feature on his website:
Houston Community Newspapers recently published a column by Steven Hotze about a court decision concerning the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx. The decision came from the Fourteenth Court of Appeals, a state appellate court that sits in Houston. The court reversed a jury verdict and judgment in favor of Carol Ernst who alleged that Vioxx had caused her husband’s death. In his column, Hotze accuses the court of usurping the role of the jury. To hear Hotze tell it, the court’s opinion was a historic break with ages of legal tradition. Yet nowhere in his column does Hotze even attempt to address the court’s reasoning for its decision.
In fact, the court of appeals merely did what courts like it do everyday—it reviewed a trial-court result to determine whether it comported with the law and was supported by legally sufficient evidence. In this case, the court decided that the trial-court’s judgment did neither. The verdict could not be upheld and so the court of appeals reversed it.
At trial, Mrs. Ernst’s lawyers presented evidence that Vioxx causes blood clots that sometimes lead to myocardial infarctions—the medical term for heart attacks. Indeed, the consensus in the scientific community is that if Vioxx indeed kills people, it does so in exactly that fashion. There is no other theory for how Vioxx causes death. In reaching its decision, the court of appeals assumed this theory was true.
The trouble was that there was no evidence that Mr. Ernst died of a heart attack. The autopsy revealed neither a blood clot nor any infarcted myocardium (dead heart tissue). Either one would have been some evidence that the cause of Mr. Ernst’s death was a clot-induced heart attack.
Instead, the autopsy listed the cause of death listed as an arrhythmia (an abnormal heartbeat) resulting from atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). In spite of Mr. Ernst’s apparent healthy and athletic lifestyle, the autopsy revealed years’ worth of plaque in his arteries.
Mrs. Ernst’s lawyers and experts offered an array of suppositions of how her husband’s death might have been a Vioxx-caused heart attack instead of a sudden cardiac arrest brought on by hardened arteries. The court of appeals, after examining all of the evidence provided to the jury, determined that those hypotheses were not scientifically sound; rather they were mere speculation. Mrs. Ernst’s lawyers wanted the jury to venture a guess about what had killed her husband. But under the rule of law, we don’t ask juries to guess. Their verdicts must be based on sound evidence.
Contrary to Hotze’s accusations, this case was not some favor the court of appeals did for Merck. The court didn’t say that Vioxx doesn’t cause heart attacks or absolve Merck of any wrongdoing it may have committed in marketing the drug. It simply determined that no reliable evidence supported the jury’s verdict. When cases that should never make it to juries get presented to juries who then render a verdict on insufficient or unsound evidence, it is the job of the court of appeals to fix it. That’s all that happened in this case.
No activism. Just plain old good judicial oversight.
You’ve got a clear choice in the race for Supreme Court, Place 3. I urge you to vote for Justice Jeff Brown and pray that these type of shenanigans will be purged from the Harris County Republican Party.