Phila.

Trial Lawyers' PAC Gives Wecht $300,000: Reports

In interviews conducted last week for today's issue of Pennsylvania Law Weekly , the four state appellate court candidates all said fundraising has been a struggle over the course of the race. Zack Needles 11-01-2011 In interviews conducted last week for today's issue of Pennsylvania Law Weekly , the four state appellate court candidates all said fundraising has been a struggle over the course of the race. But the latest and final round of financial disclosure reports before the Nov. 8 election, released Friday by the Pennsylvania Department of State, show that one candidate has now bucked that trend. In this most recent reporting period, Democratic Superior Court hopeful David N. Wecht received $300,000 in contributions from the Committee for a Better Tomorrow, a political action committee associated with the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association, in addition to about $80,000 from other sources, according to DOS reports. Those latest contributions brought Wecht's total amount raised in the race to about $512,000 roughly $314,000 more than his opponent, Victor A. Stabile, who raised about $76,000 in the most recent reporting period, bringing his total to $198,000, according to DOS reports. The Committee for a Better Tomorrow was also, however, Stabile's biggest contributor by far, donating $25,000 during the most recent reporting period, according to DOS reports. The next largest donations to Stabile's campaign during the most recent reporting cycle were for $5,000 each. Stabile, who is managing partner of Dilworth Paxson's Harrisburg office, now has about $120,000 on hand, while Wecht, an Allegheny County Common Pleas Court judge, has about $322,000 left in his coffers, according to DOS reports. Stabile said Monday that a $300,000 contribution from a PAC that has a "very obvious, definite and articulated interest in how courts decide cases" raises "very serious issues." Referring to a well-known 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Stabile said, "I think everyone involved with this needs to go and read the Caperton decision." In Caperton v. Massey Coal Co. , a five-justice majority ruled that the U.S. Constitution's Due Process Clause requires an inquiry into whether a contributor's influence on the election of a judge, under the circumstances, would tempt that judge to abandon impartiality.

"This is the kind of conduct I believe that really upsets people at the trial lawyers," Stabile said of the $300,000 donation. "The kind of conduct that will lead to some kind of reform." But Wecht said it would be impossible for the PTLA's contribution to affect his impartiality on the bench if elected. "I know as well as you do that the Committee for a Better Tomorrow is composed of Philadelphia-area trial lawyers, but I do not know who the individual contributors are or the amounts they contributed [to the PAC]," he said. "It would be thoroughly impossible for me to even speculate as to who would be giving my campaign money so I couldn't possibly be considering the contribution of any individual lawyer." Wecht added that, during his time as a trial judge, he has made it his practice to "go overboard in making disclosures" and would continue to do so if elected to the Superior Court. Samuel H. Pond, the treasurer of the Committee for a Better Tomorrow, said the PAC "allows us to participate in the process without it being an appearance of impropriety or some kind of issue that makes everyone uncomfortable with a possible recusal." "It allows us to participate without any individual contributor going before a judge," he said. Pond also pointed out that the committee was Stabile's largest contributor, as well as Wecht's, and said it evaluates each candidate, regardless of political party affiliation, before determining how much to contribute. The problem, Pond said, is that those candidates who receive smaller contributions from the Committee for a Better Tomorrow often tend to claim that the PAC is attempting to curry favor with a particular candidate. "Our number one concern is a qualified judiciary," he said. Still, Stabile said that while the PTLA has the right to contribute to whichever campaigns it chooses, the amount it gave to Wecht is disproportionate to what the other candidates have received and "supplants every other effort the candidates have made" to raise money. "The amount the trial lawyers contributed to Wecht's campaign is the amount of money most [intermediate appellate court] candidates hope to raise as their goal in the entire race," he said. "With that one contribution, the trial lawyers have basically funded Wecht's entire campaign and everything else he's raised is gravy." But political analyst Larry Ceisler said $300,000 still isn't necessarily a game-changing amount of money in the Superior Court race. "I don't know what [Wecht's campaign is] going to do with the money, but really, when it comes to TV, it doesn't buy that much," he said. "What it can do is put you on the air at a decent clip in Western Pennsylvania."

But Ceisler said there's already likely to be a higher voter turnout in Western Pennsylvania because of the competitive race for Allegheny County executive, so it's likely Wecht's campaign will direct their funds toward trying to ramp up Philadelphia-area voter turnout, which he said "looks like it will be pretty low." Ceisler also said he didn't think the Committee for a Better Tomorrow's $300,000 contribution raised any ethical red flags. "I don't think it does because, actually, when the amount is so conspicuous, I think people tend to definitely tow the straight line or even sometimes, to the detriment to the contributors, bend over backward to appear impartial," he said. Ceisler added that it's likely the PTLA felt it necessary to contribute a significant amount of money to a Democratic judicial candidate because the Democratic Party has so little power in the state's executive and legislative branches. "I think [the contribution's] large but I think there's probably a lot on the line," he said. "The thing is I think that the trial lawyers look at the governor's office and realize they don't have a friend and they look at the majorities in the General Assembly and see that they don't have friends, so they're probably putting a lot of eggs in one basket. I think it's as simple as that." Pond said recent developments in Pennsylvania, including changes to the state's joint and several liability doctrine, have left trial lawyers and their clients feeling like they're "under attack." While Stabile is a "good candidate," Pond said, Wecht "is more inclined to be someone who we would want to have on the bench right now." "I want to make one thing very, very clear: The Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association is a nonpartisan association," he said. "We will back any candidate that is pro-civil justice and that allows access to the courtroom." Zack Needles can be contacted at 215-557-2493 or zneedles@alm.com. Follow him on Twitter@ZNeedlesTLI.