infor. on the nominee Owen with lots of clickable stories.

[rodeodance]

i got this as an email from americanprogressaction.org today.

JUDICIARY
The Radical, Activist Owen

The right wing likes to raise the roof whenever they suspect any judicial activism on the nation's benches. Interesting, then, that they've stayed silent on President Bush's nominee Judge Priscilla Owen. Owen has a long record of radical judicial activism and overreach. She has unfailingly voted to throw out jury verdicts against corporations and denied workers recompense for job-related injuries and unfair employment practices. Texas newspapers have flatly stated that "Owen … seems all too willing to bend the law to fit her views," is "less interested in impartially interpreting the law than in pushing an agenda" and "demonstrates a results-oriented streak that belies supporters' claims that she strictly follows the law." The San Antonio Express-News summed it up: "The senate should not block a judicial nominee simply because he or she is more conservative or more liberal than the Senate's majority party.… But concerns about Owen go to the heart of what makes a good judge." Here's a look at her record:

BUSINESS BY THE NUMBERS: According to an old saying, the customer is always right. For Owen, the opposite is true. The consumer is always wrong and the big corporations are always right. According to Texas Watch, since her election to Texas's top court in 1994, Owen has sided with business interests over the victims in every single one of 175 cases in which the court decided against consumers. In the 68 cases in which the court ruled in favor of the consumers, Owen dissented 22 times.

ENRON: In Enron Corp. v. Spring Independent School District, Owen ruled in Enron's favor on a tax matter. Enron saved $225,000 and the school district lost money. Owen had received $8,600 in campaign contributions from Enron prior to writing the opinion.

HALLIBURTON: The Alliance for Justice reports that in the case of Sanchez v. Halliburton, a Halliburton field worker named Carlos Sanchez "won a $2.6 million verdict after the jury found that a company supervisor had framed him to test positive for cocaine." An appeals court overturned the verdict; Sanchez tried to bring the case to the Texas Supreme Court. In the months during which the case was before the Court, Halliburton made its only campaign donations to the Texas Supreme Court that year, and gave thousands of dollars to three justices: Priscilla Owen, Nathan Hecht, and Alberto Gonzales. Result: the court declined to hear the case and the ruling overturning Sanchez's case stood.

FORD: A more tragic case is the case of Willie Searcy. A defective seat belt left the teenaged Searcy paralyzed and in need of constant medical care after a car slammed into his Ford pickup. A jury awarded his family, which did not have the financial resources to pay for Searcy's care, millions of dollars in damages. Ford appealed, taking the case to the Texas Supreme Court. Owen took the case and allowed it to languish for years. When she did get around to writing the opinion, she took issue with a point of law that had not even been raised in the appeal, wrote long, complicated clarifications of a law that was no longer even on the books, "left the family with nothing and ordered a new trial." Searcy died while awaiting the Owen-ordered new trial. While Willie Searcy's case moved through the system, Owen accepted over $20,000 from Baker Botts, the law firm which was part of Ford's defense team.

GTE SOUTHWEST: In 1999, three female GTE employees sued their employer, Bruce Shields, for abuse. The women testified Shields would physically charge at them, tape humiliating notes to their shirts, curse at them, and make them scrub the floors on their hands and knees (even though the company had a professional cleaning service.) The Texas Supreme court ruled Shields had created a "workplace that was a den of terror for the employees." The decision was unanimous save one justice: Priscilla Owen.

UNIVERSE LIFE INSURANCE: Owen also joined a dissenting opinion that sided with a big insurance company which refused to pay for a woman's heart surgery. The majority affirmed the jury's award of actual damages for the woman and said Owen's view "would take the resolution of bad-faith disputes away from the juries that have been deciding bad faith cases for more than a decade."

THE ACTIVIST: People for the American Way has documented that, while he was her colleague on the Texas Supreme Court, now-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales criticized Owen's judgment 11 times in less than two years. He charged her with ignoring the legislative intent of laws and struggling to manufacture pre-determined outcomes. In one particular case, he called her decision an "unconscionable act of judicial activism."

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES: Owen has close ties to right-wing Svengali Karl Rove. Rove helped Owen get her first judicial position in 1994, raising nearly a million dollars – $926,000 – for her judicial campaign. In return, he received over a quarter million – $247,000 – in consulting fees from her campaign.

[Roland99]

1. Here's a direct link:

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480


This is the biggest reason she's up for nomination now (note: it has NOTHING to do with her "faith")


FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES: Owen has close ties to right-wing Svengali Karl Rove. Rove helped Owen get her first judicial position in 1994, raising nearly a million dollars – $926,000 – for her judicial campaign. In return, he received over a quarter million – $247,000 – in consulting fees from her campaign.