Echo chamber

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an editorial today that comments on the U.S. Chamber's "slick" P.R. campaign to pressure state legislatures to tilt the legal playing field even more radically toward the interests of corporations.

Echo chamber

03/30/2006

Flash! Lawyers for big corporations like working in states where the laws favor big corporations.

This startling fact is the essence of a slick PR campaign being conducted by America's biggest corporate lobbying organization, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.

The campaign's aim is to pressure state legislatures to tilt the legal playing field even more radically toward the interests of corporations.

Each year, the Chamber sponsors a survey of corporation general counsels and senior attorneys, asking them about the legal systems in the 50 states. In this year's survey, Missouri ranked 35th, up from 40th last year, while Illinois ranked 45th, up from 46th.

"Missouri is a great example of a state that has taken substantive steps to fix its legal system," Chamber president Tom Donohue proclaimed in releasing the 2006 rankings. Despite Illinois' slight improvement, he stated, it "has a long way to go to finish the job."

Whether they constitute a fix is a matter of opinion, but there's no denying the changes to Missouri's legal system. Lawmakers have made it harder for injured parties to file certain kinds of civil suits, made it more difficult to file suits where juries might be more sympathetic toward individuals and set limits on how much companies could be fined for certain kinds of damages.

The Chamber of Commerce is using its latest survey in sly full-page newspaper ads — including one in this newspaper — to cry out: "Please don't feed the trial lawyers." The ads urge Missouri-like changes to legal systems in such states as Illinois.

It's hardly surprising that the corporate lawyers surveyed — those who work for companies with at least $100 million in annual revenue — prefer legal systems that favor them.

But corporate professionals in the field of economic development have different priorities. When they answer questions about why companies locate where they do, liability issues rarely come up. The industry publication Area Development has been conducting such surveys for 20 years. The factors most often cited by development professionals are the availability of skilled labor, highway access, high-speed Internet and government incentives, as well as housing and access to quality health care.

Encouraging new businesses and the creation of new jobs is something we all support. To succeed, we'd be well advised to ignore the echo Chamber of giant corporations and focus our efforts on what really matters.