MTLA President’s Message:
A Modest Proposal by Philip O. Foard
My final President’s message concerns
advocacy, a different type of advocacy — without attorneys. We are losing the only battle that means anything, the public relations battle for the hearts and minds of Americans on the issue of whether our civil justice system is out of control. To understand the seriousness of the prob- lem, some background is essential. In 1991, the Republican Party and the Se- nior Bush Administration decided to take on tort reform as a major public policy issue. At that time, Ralph Wayne was President of the Texas Civil Justice League, the oldest ‘tort reform’ lobby group in the State. Wayne informed the Elder Bush that a recent poll, funded by the Koch Foundation, showed lawsuit abuse had a high level of awareness. Re- publican pollster, Jan Lohvizen, was then dispatched to Texas to confirm this and reported back that the issue polled well with some 70% of the Texas residents sur- veyed. That same month, the White House Council on Competitiveness, headed by Vice President, Dan Quayle, embraced ‘tort reform’ as a priority issue and assigned the Solicitor General and long-time tobacco industry attorney, Ken Starr, the task of developing a plan to over- haul the country’s civil liability laws. The Starr Report was issued in August, 1991 and was adopted by President George Herbert Walker Bush in a White House ceremony at which he signed an Execu- tive Order on Civil Justice Reform. Two months later, an impressive alli- ance of some 300 major trade groups and corporations was formed under the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) to give the Starr Report momen- tum. ATRA immediately hired a subsidiary of Grey Advertising, APCO & Associates, to create local ‘grassroots’ front groups. APCO had specialized in tort reform since the early ‘80’s for the tobacco industry. Neal Cohen, the principal ac- count executive working on behalf of Philip Morris, was put in charge. In his own words, in a speech before the Public Affairs Council, he outlined how to run a successful grassroots strategy: Rule #1 for me is stay away from sub- stance. Don’t talk about details of
Spring 2001
legislation . . . Talk about . . . frivolous lawsuits, lawsuit abuse, trial lawyer greed. In a tort reform battle if State Farm is the leader of the coalition, you’re not going to pass the Bill.
It’s
not credible, O.K., because it’s so self- serving everyone knows the insurance companies would be the one benefit- ing from this . . . Legislators care only about three things in life, and sub- stance is not one of them. They care about money, . . . votes, . . . and how the media perceives them. As a grassroots consultant . . . your job is to manipulate those three things to your advantage.
And manipulate they have! Recent documents released in the tobacco litiga- tion show that by 1995 Big Tobacco’s Tort Reform Project alone had grown into a sophisticated $15 million-a-year campaign. Never before has the syner- gism between the Republican Party and its blue-chip corporate supporters been
1 PHILIP MORRIS COMPANIES, INC. TO: Mr. Michael A. Miles
more effective on behalf of both. But it was particularly true for George W. ‘Grassroots’ groups known as Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, or CALA, were test marketed in southwest Texas before going national.1
The response proved so
successful that by the end of ’92 CALA ‘grassroots’ organizations had spread all across the State, producing a new politi- cal awareness of their ability to both punish their enemies and reward their friends with costly TV and other attack ads. This new coalition established a win- ning political base for W against a popular democratic governor, Anne Richards, who he defeated in 1994. One of Bush’s first acts as governor in 1995 was to meet with representatives of nine Texas CALA’s in a salsa factory out- side Austin, after which he declared a legislative ‘emergency’ on ‘frivolous law- suits’. Over his two terms, Bush signed a series of brutal bills that severely reduced
(Continued on page 4)
INTER-OFFICE CORRESPONDENCE 120 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017 DATE: February 4, 1992
FROM: Craig L. Fuller SUBJECT: January Monthly Report GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS Tort reform ads will be tested in Texas. We are making two commercials with Grey Advertising, under the sponsorship of the American Tort Reform Association and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, to test the impact of the tort reform issue in Texas state senate elections.
Trial Reporter
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