HARRIET MIERS: DID SHE CALL TRIAL LAWYERS "GREEDY"? . . . The discovery of a 1995 letter from Harriet Miers to then-Governor George W. Bush is the topic of headlines today, like this one from the Associated Press:

Miers Lobbied Bush on Lawyer Fees in 1995

President Bush praises Harriet Miers as an opponent of legislating from the judicial bench, but as a corporate lawyer she lobbied then-Gov. Bush to let the Texas high court rather than the Legislature decide if attorney fees should be limited.

In the process, Miers unleashed a verbal assault on trial lawyers who typically file lawsuits and whose cases sometimes land in the U.S. Supreme Court, where Bush now has nominated her to serve. She suggested they were "greedy."

The 1995 letter doesn't go as far as is being portrayed. Here's a link to the actual letter (pdf). It's common for state courts to regulate a state's lawyers; to call this "legislating from the bench" is not an apt description. And Miers' supposed attack on "greedy trial lawyers" didn't happen either; she wasn't describing all plaintiffs' lawyers, but only those who were pushing a bill that would have prevented the Texas Supreme Court from making rules governing the use of lawyer fee agreements.

Is this nitpicking? Perhaps. But there's no need to dredge up, then misread, a 10-year-old letter to demonstrate that Miers is a tort-reformer hostile to the idea that all citizens should have unfettered access to the courts. After all, she's White House counsel. Someone so close to the president obviously supports and believes in the tort-reform agenda that he brought with him from Texas.

Comments

[Rufus]

Not to change the subject, particularly since you were being fair to a tort reformer, about the only good thing you can say about Miers, but I'm waiting with much anticipation for your comments about the article in yesterday's New York Times business section about the silica litigation in Texas and elsewhere. Hmmm ... perhaps it doesn't change the subject from "greedy lawyers."

[Evan]

Rufus: I'll have to take a look at that.

[John Day]

I have read the article from the NYT on the silica litigation. I agree that a careful investigation of the doctors and lawyers involved in those cases is necessary. If these cases are "manufactured" and the lawyers participated in the process they need to be punished.

[Jeff]

Punished how?

[Eh Nonymous]

I'd like to hear John's suggestion for "how," but my guess would be:

Sanctions imposed by the state disciplinary authority of the state in which they are licensed to practice:
- formal disciplinary proceedings
- a chance for them to be heard
- appeals as necessary
- then suspension of licenses, censures, or for the most egregious cases (and I have no idea if the cases referred to are those sorts) then disbarred, permanently prevented from ever holding a license to practice law in that jurisdiction. And it doesn't help you much in other jurisdictions, either.

That is, you can punish a lawyer by taking away her or his meal ticket. Sometimes that even results in malpractice suits, which is a consumer-oriented (rather than regulatory) way to punish unethical and immoral lawyering.

[Jeff]

I was thinking of something more prophylactic.
Some suggestions:

-Insert a spinal tap and inject steam
-Apply a tourniquet around a leg and lop off pieces distal. Move the tourniquet proximally and repeat.
-Watch "Apprentice" re-runs

[Ted]

Jeff:

A punishment of watching "Apprentice" re-runs may violate the Eighth Amendment. Cf. Williams v. Boles (7th Cir. 1988).