Is Edwards going to remain neutral?

[dntw8up]

<p>“dntw8up: Can you could provide a link to Edwards’ TV ads for his law firm?”</p>

<p>I wouldn’t know where to find links for local television advertisements that ran on NC stations in the 1980s.</p>

[BlackTie]

<p>Remember, folks, Edwards didn’t abandon his campaign. He only suspended it. If he doesn’t endorse anyone, and comes a brokered convention, he could be the one, right? Who know? :-)</p>

[zoosermom]

<p>"that’s why I don’t understand why people hold such disdain for those who are wealthy and try to make a difference. "</p>

<p>That is an excellent point.</p>

[janieblue]

<p>dntw8up: Well, he didn’t open his own law firm until 1993. Before that, he was with one of the most well-known law firms around (Wade Smith’s law firm-- Smith, as you’ll probably remember, was one of the lawyers for the Duke lacrosse boys). The first personal injury case Edwards ever tried was in 1984, which he won ($3.7 million). Here’s what happened next (from NY Times, 1/31/2004 article):</p>

<p>

The firm took the case that resulted in Mr. Edwards’s first big jury verdict as a favor to a state senator and lawyer who had let it languish. Mr. Edwards, then a young associate, got the assignment because it was considered a loser.</p>

<p>"I said, `Let’s dump the file on John’s desk,’ " said Wade H. Hargrove, a former partner at the firm.</p>

<p>The plaintiff in the case, Howard E. G. Sawyer, was disabled as a result of what Mr. Edwards said was an overdose of a drug used in alcohol aversion therapy. O. E. Starnes, who represented the hospital, had never heard of Mr. Edwards.</p>

<p>“He came over here and ate our lunch,” Mr. Starnes said.</p>

<p>The jury awarded Mr. Sawyer $3.7 million.</p>

<p>“That created a buzz,” Mr. Hargrove said. “The revenue that he was producing was an out-of-body experience. John would pick up an $800,000 fee for making a few phone calls.”

</p>

<p>I doubt he needed to advertise on TV. ;)</p>

[coureur]

<p>Edwards might be holding out in the hope of another VP slot on the ticket. </p>

<p>He’s young - 8 years as VP to either Obama or Clinton might set him up nicely for a more promising run for president after that.</p>

[dntw8up]

<p>Perhaps my dates are wrong. The ads could have been running between '93 and '98 when he ousted Lauch Faircloth. The ads reminded me of similar annoying ads that ran in Pittsburgh, PA, for attorney Edgar Snyder and Associates. At the time I wondered if they used the same firm to produce their spots. Most attorneys who advertise on TV don’t “need” to, but they are of the ilk who think one can never have too much money. In any case, once Edwards supported the so-called Patriot Act, he became irredeemable in my view.</p>

[janieblue]

<p>

The ads could have been running between '93 and '98 when he ousted Lauch Faircloth.

</p>

<p>Well, he beat him in 1998. If you saw any ads then, they would have been in reference to his Senate race.</p>

<p>We could keep going like this forever, but . . .</p>

<p>

In any case, once Edwards supported the so-called Patriot Act, he became irredeemable in my view.

</p>

<p>What Senator DIDN’T vote for the Patriot Act? I mean, that’s why they named it that. Who’s gonna vote against something called the “Patriot Act?”
At any rate I don’t think anybody voted against it.</p>

<p>[U.S&lt;/a&gt;. Senate: Legislation & Records Home &gt; Votes &gt; Roll Call Vote](<a href=“U.S. Senate: Request not Accepted - Security Risk Detected”>U.S. Senate: U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 107th Congress - 1st Session)</p>

<p>Voting for the war was bad, but at least he acknowledged that mistake and apologized for it. Clinton never has.</p>

[kluge]

<p>dntw8up - I don’t doubt that you sincerely believe what you’ve written, although it’s probably not true and demonstrates a near-complete ignorance of the legal profession. From an interesting article from the Washington Monthly some years back:

By sheer virtue of his skill as a lawyer, Edwards had been able to avoid taking the kinds of cases the public detests. During [his Senate] campaign, opponents tried unsuccessfully to criticize him for turning away 35 to 40 cases for each one he accepted. But such was the demand for his service that it was impossible to accommodate everyone. Even so, a close friend and fellow attorney says that, before running for Senate, Edwards had a team of doctors and nurses privately screen his record to make sure that no case he’d brought to trial could be considered frivolous: “When they got significantly into [their review], they decided he’d never come close to violating the standard.”</p>

<p>Yet [his opponent Lauch] Faircloth pressed ahead with a lawyer-baiting campaign… Even before Edwards had won the Democratic primary, Faircloth ran his first television ad attacking his opponent’s career. “Lauch tried to the tune of millions of dollars to make the case that because John was a trial lawyer, and because of the public’s conception of trial lawyers, therefore you shouldn’t vote for him,” says a top official of the Edwards campaign. “After a month and a couple million, Faircloth realized he wasn’t getting anywhere.” But this did not stop his campaign from following the ad with another, smearing Edwards as a trial lawyer who was also a liar. It didn’t get much traction. Next came an ad vilifying Edwards as both a trial lawyer and a liberal. No luck there, either. Faircloth’s final ad featured side-by-side photographs of Edwards and Bill Clinton sporting Pinocchio-style noses while a voiceover linked them as "two tobacco-taxing liberal lawyers who are well known for stretching the truth.</p>

<p>…</p>

<p>Yet the lesson Republicans took away from the race was that Faircloth hadn’t attacked lawyers nearly enough. “Lauch went at it very half-heartedly and he blinked,” says a prominent GOP consultant who advised Faircloth. “He didn’t identify him strongly enough as a plaintiffs’ lawyer,” says Black.</p>

<p>…</p>

<p>Years of conservative agitation about trial lawyers have led the public to believe that the courts are clogged with “frivolous lawsuits.” But that belief is unlikely to withstand a national debate, because the truth is fundamentally different from what tort reformers pretend. There has indeed been a rise in frivolous claims. But they haven’t been brought by personal injury lawyers; those claims have actually decreased over the last decade. The single factor most clogging the judicial system is frivolous litigation brought by corporations against corporations, which don’t involve independent trial lawyers at all. For example, John Deere went after a competitor for using the same shade of green that Deere paints its tractors. Gillette sued Norelco, claiming its ads for a new electric razor were “false and deceptive” because they depicted non-electric razors as “ferocious creatures.” Nabisco sued Keebler over the latter’s claim that its chocolate-chip cookies contained 25 percent more chips than Nabisco’s. Each of these cases is more representative of the true problem of frivolous litigation. But because they involve a Republican constituency—business—rather than a Democrat constituency like trial lawyers, tort reform advocates don’t mention them.

The power of the right wing propaganda machine is pervasive.</p>