Gordon Maag's revenge

From the Chicago Tribune

Gordon Maag's revenge
Published December 24, 2004

The loser in last month's Illinois Supreme Court election in the southernmost district of the state is not going quietly from the public stage. Democrat Gordon Maag not only lost that race, the voters also kicked him off a state Appellate Court by denying him retention. Now Maag has filed a $110 million defamation lawsuit against a coalition of business groups that opposed him.
Maag is a product of Madison County, the nation's No. 1 Judicial Hellhole according to the American Tort Reform Foundation. He received substantial support from trial lawyers in this campaign, which was widely viewed as a referendum on the state's medical malpractice crisis and the overall deplorable condition of the civil justice system that Madison County embodies.
But Maag discounts all of that as if the context of last fall's campaign was irrelevant. He claims he lost both the race and his Appellate Court seat not because voters were fed up with a court system that allows too many meritless lawsuits and tilts too far toward plaintiffs, but because of one particular piece of negative campaigning.
Maag blames his loss on a flier distributed by the Illinois Coalition for Jobs, Growth and Prosperity and one of its members, the Illinois Chamber of Commerce. Maag claims the flier misled voters into believing he was both soft on crime and a reason employers leave Illinois. Also named in his suit are the coalition's chairman, Ronald Gidwitz, and treasurer, Gregory Baise.
Maag filed his suit in Madison County. But one Madison County judge already has recused himself from hearing the case and others may follow. (The Illinois Supreme Court has transferred to a different judicial circuit another suit stemming from this race. In it, Maag's son, Thomas, charges that a spokesman for Maag's victorious opponent, Republican Lloyd Karmeier, illegally put campaign signs on Maag's property.)
The Maag-Karmeier race was a vicious, mudslinging affair that became the most expensive judicial race in Illinois history. Both Maag and Karmeier were targets of fierce negative ad campaigns financed by $8.5 million raised by the candidates' supporters. The ads were so nasty the Illinois State Bar Association implored both sides to withdraw them. Neither did.
But there's a whole lot of 1st Amendment freedom of speech between nasty fliers and proving, as Maag must, that the defendants either knew the statements they made were false or spread them with reckless disregard for the truth.
Given that Maag is from Madison County, suing for the big dollars may come naturally. But, as with so much that comes out of that corner of the state, this suit perfectly illustrates the misuse of the state's justice system that so disgusted voters as they made judicial choices last month.