Quantcast

WEST VIRGINIA RECORD

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Time to retire the Lear Jet Justice franchise

Our View
Law money 03

A sequel is seldom as good as the original, but fans of the first installment can rarely resist seeing the second. If the first one stunk, however, who wants to watch another?

Imagine being forced to see the same unappealing characters again in a predictable and even less satisfying rehash of a story you didn't like the first time.


That's what's happening to the citizens of West Virginia.

We didn't like Lear Jet Justice when we were first subjected to it in 2014, and now we're being forced to sit through Lear Jet Justice II.

As in the original, predatory plaintiffs attorneys from Mississippi fly in to West Virginia to try to shake down another nursing home company in a Harrison County court.

“Lear Jet Justice in West Virginia” aired on ABC's World News Tonight and Nightline two years ago.

Subtitled “A ‘Circus Masquerading as a Court,’” the story focused on a multimillion-dollar judgment awarded to the McHugh Fuller firm and upheld by our state Supreme Court, with a majority opinion written by West Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice Robin Davis.

Firm principal Michael Fuller had purchased a million-dollar jet from Davis' husband just three years prior to his multimillion-dollar victory.

Despite obvious conflicts of interest, Davis refrained from recusing herself and claimed ignorance of the million-dollar jet sale when it was subsequently exposed. She also claimed not to know that Fuller and colleagues had contributed more than $35,000 to her 2012 reelection campaign.

“The information surrounding the million-dollar Lear Jet transaction between Justice Robin Davis’ husband and the personal injury lawyer who then appeared before Justice Davis raises serious questions about the appearance of impropriety and about our code of judicial conduct,” says Roman Stauffer, executive director of West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse.

Now there's LJJ II, and it's another stinker.

ORGANIZATIONS IN THIS STORY

More News