Karmeier Appointments Come Under Fire
Two of Supreme Court Justice Lloyd Karmeier's judicial appointees are coming under fire again, this time from the non-partisan Illinois State Bar Association, whose members include both trial lawyers and defense attorneys for doctors, hospitals, and corporations.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Republican Karmeier appointees Stephen McGlynn and Don Weber were rated "not recommended" by the ISBA. Judge McGlynn scored a 56.7% and Judge Weber scored a 35.5%, the fourth lowest ranking for any judicial candidate in the entire state.
By contrast, fellow Republican judicial candidate Judge James Hackett, also of Madison County, recieved a score of 95%, or "highly recommended".
You may remember that Stephen McGlynn's appointment to Appellate Court Judge raised some eyebrows. McGlynn is the former Chair of the St. Clair County Republicans, co-chair of the Illinois Republican Party, and key Karmeier supporter. McGlynn was appointed to the Appellate Court on Karmeier's recommendation, after a pre-screening by a committee appointed by Karmeier, even though he'd never served on the bench.
More recently, Karmeier appointed former Madison County State's Attorney Don Weber to the bench in Madison County. Weber has a reputation as a publicity hound and loose cannon, reinforced by his 1991 paperback release "Precious Victims", where Weber scored big off a tragic double-murder.
Weber's appointment generated controversy when attorney's began requesting that their cases be transfered away from his court. The main mouthpiece for the Chamber of Commerce, the Madison County Record, has been trying to spin the transfers as a case of plaintiffs lawyers avoiding Weber because he's impartial. It now appears they've been avoiding him because -- along with 74.5% of his peers -- they think he's unfit to sit on the bench.
2 comments:
Ahhh, yes, let's see...Madison and St. Clair Counties - the world epicenter of lawsuit abuse. Clean it up and the lawyers down there would quit making windfall profits. The foxes have voted - and they don't want Steve McGlynn guarding the henhouse. That's about as fine an endorsement as an honest man could get down there.
I'll write a piece about that, probably after the primary. McGlynn wrote the opinion in a case that involving railways that cut back on venue shopping (an employee of a rail company suffered an injury that developed over time. Since he had been through Madison County a couple of times, that's where he wanted to file suit. The facts in the case suggested he should file elsewhere - Missouri, I believe). The court ruled against it and McGlynn wrote the decision, which signalled to the plaintiffs bench that Karmeier and the Apellate Court are serious about reform - and the plaintiffs bench doesn't like it one bit.
Meanwhile, the "non-partisan" (ho ho) Illinois State Bar Assn. Members are, in the case of sitting judges, only supposed to vote on judges they have appeared before. Less than 60 attorneys have thus far appeared before McGlynn - but just under 300 voted on him in this poll - which is why no one but the most liberal of Democrats does anything but guffaw at the trial lawyers characterizing its lobbying arm as 'independent' or 'non-partisan.'
The ISBA panning of Republican judicial candidates was such an obvious set-up job that every one of the papers down there recognized it for what it was - a pure partisan act. That's all of them - the Belleville News-Democrat, the Madison County Record, the Edwardsville Intelligencer, and even the ultra-liberal St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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