By Eric Dexheimer of The Houston Chronicle. Excerpts:
"Last fall, it seemed that Apache Corp., the giant Houston oil company, had hit a dead end in a long-running legal battle.
A paralegal named Cathryn Davis claimed the company fired her in 2013 for complaining about age and gender discrimination. A jury agreed, awarding $900,000 to her and her attorneys; an appeals court upheld the judgment. The company asked the Texas Supreme Court to review the case; but on Oct. 2, it declined.
Litigants can ask the state’s highest civil court to reconsider such decisions, but it’s a long shot; nearly 98 percent of the time, it refuses, according to research by the Texas Bar. Nevertheless, Apache notified the Supreme Court it intended to ask for a so-called rehearing.
After the company contributed $250,000 in political support to justices seeking re-election, the court changed its mind.
Texas is one of only four states with partisan Supreme Court elections, and Apache’s appeal occurred while two of the nine Republican justices were simultaneously campaigning and making decisions about the company’s case. (In all, four were up for election but two recused themselves from the case because they had worked on Apache v. Davis before it reached the high court.)
Three weeks after the court’s denial of the appeal, Apache donated $250,000 to a newly formed political action committee, Judicial Fairness PAC. The Fortune 600 oil company has given money to political candidates before. But state records show the donation to the PAC dwarfed its previous gifts.
The contribution appears to be just the second Apache has made in a judicial race; the other was for $2,500 and was made nearly a decade ago.
Texas law limits how much PACs can contribute to judicial candidates. Yet there is a loophole: Unlike with direct contributions, there is no ceiling on how much money the groups can spend independently on behalf of candidates.
Over the next several days, the Judicial Fairness PAC spent $750,000 on television and radio ads supporting the incumbent Texas Supreme Court justices, records show. Funded heavily by Texans for Lawsuit Reform, which has contributed lavishly in its efforts to rein in large jury awards, among other aims, the PAC spent a total of $4.5 million supporting the four candidates. They were the only races on which the new organization spent money."
"On Nov. 3, each of the incumbent justices won. Two weeks later, Apache filed its motion for rehearing.
This time, the Supreme Court, upon reconsideration, agreed to hear the case. In June, it sided with Apache and against the jury’s findings, concluding that the company was going to fire Davis before she complained about discrimination. The $900,000 jury award was tossed.
The two justices who heard the case while campaigning are Chief Justice Nathan L. Hecht and Justice Jeff Boyd. Hecht declined to comment; Boyd has not responded to a request for comment."
"But, he added, when analyzed as a group, “There’s no question that there’s a significant, predictable relationship between campaign money to judges and subsequent decisions by those judges.”
Kang’s work has shown that state Supreme Court justices favor litigants from their own party in states with partisan elections. Judges also tend to support special interests and businesses from which they’ve received money."
"20 percent of the money raised by the high court candidates over the previous decade came from just nine law firms, whose biggest clients won five times more often than clients not represented by those firms."
"The big law firms respond that of course they win more often. They employ top lawyers who prevail with superior skill, knowledge and experience. Those qualities attract the biggest clients with the most at stake.
As frequent litigants, they note they are in the best position to know and support candidates who will make the fairest and most efficient justices. The largest firms, such as Vinson & Elkins, have political action committees that donate widely."
"The company’s attorneys responded that courts have ruled campaign contributions don’t create a conflict of interest. A Vinson & Elkins spokesman added that the firm abides by Texas’ spending limits."
"In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that a coal mining executive had wielded too much influence when he poured millions of dollars into electing a new West Virginia Supreme Court justice, who subsequently voted to overturn a $50 million verdict against the company. Yet the court stopped short of defining how much was too much when it came to campaign contributions."
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