Donations to judge figure in court case

From the St. Louis Post Dispatch

Donations to judge figure in court case
By Kevin McDermott
2/3/05
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - In a new legal argument that some warn could bring the
state's highly politicized judiciary to a standstill, the Illinois Supreme
Court is being asked to disqualify one of its members from a case because
he received political donations from one of the parties.
That unusual argument comes in the aftermath of the most expensive judicial
race of all time last year - a race in which hundreds of lawyers and
business interests across Illinois gave more than $9 million to two
competing Supreme Court candidates.
Plaintiffs suing State Farm Insurance before the high court have demanded
that the winner of that race, newly seated Justice Lloyd Karmeier, either
recuse himself from the case or be disqualified from it because State Farm
or its officers donated about $350,000 to Karmeier's campaign.
State Farm's attorneys have answered with a warning that to grant the
motion would risk "wholesale recusal by judges" in cases across Illinois -
a state which elects its judges and, unlike most states, places no limits
on the amount or source of the money.
"If a judge cannot sit on a case in which a contributing lawyer or litigant
is involved, judges who have been elected to this court as well as other
courts would have to recuse themselves in perhaps a majority of cases
filed," argues the latest motion, filed Monday.
To punctuate the point, the motion includes campaign finance records
showing that several of the plaintiffs' attorneys were themselves donors to
Illinois judicial candidates in the past, including the San Francisco law
firm that filed the recusal motion.
That firm, Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, argued in an earlier
motion that Karmeier should step down because the donations from State Farm
create the impression of a conflict of interest, and because the case had
earlier been heard by his election opponent, Gordon Maag.
As a Fifth District Appellate Court Justice in Mount Vernon, Maag had
upheld a judgment that State Farm was liable for using after-market parts
in vehicle repairs. That is the case now on appeal before the Illinois
Supreme Court, where Karmeier would be allowed to participate in the
deliberations if he chooses to.
"He is being asked to pass judgment on the opinion of a bitter political
opponent," plaintiffs' attorney Elizabeth Cabraser argues in the motion,
filed last week.
The motion also maintains that State Farm's political donations to Karmeier
- both directly and through business groups that heavily back his campaign
- create a situation in which "the public's confidence in the integrity and
impartiality of the judiciary will be eroded" if Karmeier participates in
ruling on the case.
Cabraser, the San Francisco attorney who filed the motion to recuse
Karmeier, didn't return a phone message seeking comment Tuesday. Gino
DiVito, the Chicago attorney who filed the response on behalf of State
Farm, declined to comment.
The fact that Illinois allows unlimited donations from any source in
judicial elections has long been controversial. Studies by the
Post-Dispatch and other sources have repeatedly found that the attorneys
who argue cases before judges are their biggest donors.
Still, several sources familiar with the history of Illinois' judiciary
said Tuesday they don't remember ever seeing the argument made that
political donations from parties in cases are cause for judges to recuse
themselves.
Such a precedent, some say, could dramatically illustrate how politicized
Illinois' judiciary has become, particularly if it is applied to the
Karmeier-Maag race. Karmeier, the Republican, was backed largely by
business interests, while Illinois' trial lawyers tended to back his
opponent, Maag, the Democrat.
Several experts said Tuesday that, if such a wide range of campaign
political supporters and enemies had to be taken into account from the
bench, Karmeier could theoretically be barred from presiding over just
about any case that came before the court.
"If this is going to be the grounds for disqualification," said Keith
Beyler, a law professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, "we're
going to have judges disqualified all the time."
Kent Redfield, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at
Springfield, said the motion, if unusual, may have been inevitable, given
the skyrocketing cost and political bitterness of Illinois judicial
campaigns.
"It is an inevitable outcome of allowing corporations and unions to give
directly to judges," Redfield said. "It's very corrosive to the
independence of the judicial system."
The latest motion was filed Monday, the same day that new campaign finance
records showed the Karmeier-Maag race spawned a staggering $7 million in
spending on their behalf in the final two months of the campaign. Most of
that was spent by opposing armies of special interest groups that have been
fighting to steer the court on issues like tort reform and medical
malpractice caps.
In all, the two campaigns raised a total of more than $9.3 million,
according to the latest documents. It is apparently a national record, by
far, for a single judicial seat.
The Supreme Court generally doesn't reveal which justices chose to
participate in deliberations on a given case until the ruling is filed. A
court spokesman on Tuesday declined to comment on the State Farm case.

[]Reporter Kevin McDermott[]
[]E-mail: kmcdermott@post-dispatch.com[]
[]Phone: 217-782-4912[]