St. Louis post Dispatch

Gordon Maag sues over election flier
By Georgina Gustin
Of the Post-Dispatch
12/20/2004

Gordon Maag, the loser in a bitter race for a seat on the Illinois Supreme Court in November, on Monday filed a $100 million defamation suit against an arm of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.
The suit said a pre-election flier distributed by the chamber maligned his record and character.
"It was a deliberate, malicious and evil, if you will, attempt by the Chamber of Commerce and its affiliates to undo Gordon Maag, and that's what they did," said Maag's attorney, Rex Carr of East St. Louis.
Maag, reached at his home in Glen Carbon, referred questions about the suit to Carr.
The suit was filed in Madison County Circuit Court, the same court dubbed a "judicial hellhole" by tort reform supporters who backed Maag's opponent, Lloyd Karmeier.
Karmeier, a Republican who had been a circuit court judge in Nashville, was sworn in Dec. 6 as a Supreme Court judge from the Fifth District, comprising the 37 southernmost counties in Illinois. He defeated Maag, a Democratic Fifth District appellate judge, 55 to 45 percent, in a contest that set a national record of $8.5 million for campaign spending in a judicial race.
The fliers, distributed in October by a division of the chamber called the Illinois Coalition for Jobs, Growth and Prosperity, called Maag's record on crime "embarrassing" and "dangerous." Maag's rulings on appellate court, the flier said, brought "the wheels of justice" in Southern Illinois to a "grinding halt."
"The purpose was not just to defeat him for the Supreme Court, but to kick him from the appellate bench," Carr said, pointing out that Maag is the only Illinois appellate judge ever to fail at retention.
Named as defendants in the suit were the coalition's treasurer, Gregory W. Baise; the coalition's president, Ronald Gidwitz, and Doug Whitley, president of the chamber.
They could not be reached for comment.
But Edward J. Murnane, president of the Illinois Civil Justice League, called the lawsuit "laughable." The tort-reform group endorsed Karmeier.
"It's so unbelievable that a defeated candidate would be complaining about statements made in the campaign when he and his campaign were so far over the edge in misstatements and untruths," Murnane said. "It was the most negative, hostile and openly false campaign I have experienced in 35 years of watching political campaigns."
Both candidates were criticized by the Illinois State Bar Association for campaign advertising that the association said distorted each others' records. The candidates rejected the association's request that they withdraw such ads.
William Schroeder, a professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Law in Carbondale, said he didn't know of any case where a political candidate had successfully sued an opponent for statements during a campaign.
He said U.S. courts have made it difficult for any public figure to prevail in a lawsuit alleging defamation of character. For an action to be successful, a public figure must demonstrate not only that a statement was false but that it was made either with the knowledge that it was false or with a reckless disregard for its truthfulness.
Schroeder said the nation has "made a choice to support freedom of speech. We don't want to discourage people from speaking their minds."
He said political candidates can expect criticism.
"You know when you choose to run that people may say negative, unpleasant and hurtful things about you," Schroeder said. Terry Hillig of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
Reporter Georgina Gustin
E-mail: ggustin@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 618-659-3640