Chamber launches effort against trial lawyers

The business lobby is turning to metaphor and not-so-subtle imagery in its long-running battle against the plaintiffs’ bar.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s legal reform arm has launched www.TrialLawyerEarmarks.com , a website depicting the U.S. Capitol smothered by weeds, each tendril symbolizing a legislative provision pushed by trial lawyers this Congress.

{mosads}The site’s headline blares: “A Tangled Tale: Plaintiffs’ trial lawyer earmarks to expand lawsuits are choking the 110th Congress.”

According to the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform (ILR), trial lawyers have been working overtime to sneak significant changes to the civil justice system into an array of bills since the Democrats took back control of Congress.

All told, they have sprouted 48 “vines” this Congress in legislation pertaining to everything from the Food and Drug Administration to homeland security.

“It’s been picking up with increasing frequency, and the breadth of their targets is really astounding,” said ILR’s president, Lisa A. Rickard. She also cited the “higher number of allies sympathetic to their cause.”

ILR likens the provisions to pork for trial lawyers, saying they would simply increase opportunities for them to sue rather than achieve legitimate reforms to the civil justice system.

“What we’re trying to do is put it in context so that members [of Congress] recognize there’s an overall objective here — and that is to expand liability,” Rickard said.

The trial attorneys’ lobby, the American Association for Justice (AAJ), has a different view.

“The U.S. Chamber wants to kill important legislation to hurt American families and help large corporations and CEOs,” the AAJ’s senior vice president for public affairs, Linda Lipsen, said. “We’re not afraid to hide from representing everyday Americans and the side of justice.”

The group also disputes that it has pushed at least one of the measures that the website highlights.

In a letter to The Washington Post, it wrote that it had never lobbied against a provision in recently enacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation to grant legal immunity to telecom companies that cooperated with the federal government’s wiretapping program.

To advertise the site, the ILR is running print and online ads in various congressional and city publications, including The Washington Post and The Washington Examiner. It will also be touting the site on conservative blogs, such as Townhall.com .

ILR cites a tax provision that passed the House as part of a package of tax extenders as the best example of trial lawyer “earmarks.” The measure allow attorneys to deduct the expenses associated with suits brought under contingency contracts up front, rather than at the time the suit goes to trial. According to Rickard, the measure amounts to a $1.6 billion tax break for the industry.

Lipsen argued that the measure is no special-interest tax break. “It does not give attorneys anything above and beyond that which is currently enjoyed by virtually every other small business in our country,” she said.