September 22, 2003
BY BRIAN DICKERSON
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
To the surprise of absolutely no one, five Michigan Supreme Court justices have denied Southfield attorney Geoffrey Fieger's request that they disqualify themselves from hearing DaimlerChrysler's appeal of a $21-million judgment awarded to Fieger's client Linda Gilbert.
"The motion for recusal is considered, and it is DENIED," the justices wrote last week in a terse reply to the 83-page brief Fieger filed in May.
But in an unusual statement accompanying the one-sentence order, one of the targeted justices, Elizabeth Weaver, conceded that campaign contributions from special interests seeking to influence the court's decisions are eroding public confidence in Weaver and her colleagues.
"The judiciary cannot afford to be perceived by the public as 'bought and paid for,' " Weaver wrote. "A system that allows and encourages the expenditure of huge amounts of money on Supreme Court elections needs reconsideration."
Fieger's recusal motion was accompanied by more than 500 pages of exhibits Fieger said demonstrated the GOP justices' hostility toward him, and their political indebtedness to DaimlerChrysler and its corporate peers.
The exhibits included campaign literature and public statements in which three Republican justices campaigning for election in 2000 -- Clifford Taylor, Stephen Markman and Robert Young Jr. -- portrayed themselves as the antidote to a judicial takeover by "Fieger's friends." Fieger also provided records showing that parties with an interest in DaimlerChrysler's appeal of Gilbert's sexual harassment judgment had contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the GOP justices' campaigns.
Weaver, the only justice who specifically addressed Fieger's allegations, confirmed that the Michigan Chamber of Commerce -- which has filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting DaimlerChrysler's appeal of the Gilbert judgment -- had spent more than $800,000 to promote her re-election last year. She said her campaign had also collected $2,000 from DaimlerChrysler's Political Action Committee, $1,500 from four attorneys representing Chrysler in its appeal -- and $200 from Fieger himself.
None of those contributions, Weaver insisted, "have even the remotest effect on my decisions and judgment as a justice of this court."
But she conceded that the necessity of raising huge amounts of money for expensive state Supreme Court campaigns has done little to enhance the court's image.
"Spending $16 million or more in a Supreme Court campaign is unseemly, wasteful and ultimately damaging to the public's trust and confidence," Weaver said.
Fieger's standing as his profession's premier self-promotion artist makes him a poor candidate to lead any crusade for judicial reform. But Weaver is honest enough to admit that Fieger is only a symptom of her court's problem, not its cause.
The disease lies in an electoral scheme in which voters ignorant of the justices' names and their court's function are manipulated by campaign donors with a direct interest in the court's decisions.
Weaver concluded her statement with a call for Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the state Legislature to study alternatives to the current judicial selection process.
It's a good idea -- one that deserves more than the kiss-off Weaver's colleagues gave Fieger.
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