Chairman's Corner
Supreme Court Stifles the People of Alabama's Right to Be Heard
December 7, 2009
In the 2010 elections three of Alabama's nine Supreme Court seats will be up for election. Voters should take notice of the recent shocking actions of our highest court as shown by their unwillingness to even hear oral arguments of the people of Alabama in the recent Medicaid lawsuits.
The voters of Alabama should be the ultimate arbiters of who shall sit upon the highest court in our state; yet, big money interests and out-of-state shell groups formed by many of the entities with cases before the courts fund election year advertisement, that in essence buys these judicial elections by skewing communications toward their candidate.
Just weeks ago the Alabama Supreme Court hypocritically consolidated Medicaid cases (after they made the lower court separate them), then dismissed and overturned trial jury verdicts on three separate cases brought against drug manufacturers. These cases were brought against these companies by the people of Alabama. The Justices in their ruling did not even allow oral argument prior to their action. The state's attorneys presented their case well and were rightly shocked at this outcome by our Supreme Court. Groups such as AARP and 13 state Attorneys General supported Alabama's case before the court.
This callous ruling and the denial of the people's right to be heard at the Supreme Court should be a clarion call for voters to rise up in 2010 and send a signal to their judiciary that we will hold our elected judiciary politically accountable. By our vote, we can demonstrate this demand that our voice be heard in an open forum of the Supreme Court. Voters should not take lightly the overturning of jury verdicts rendered by our fellow-citizen juries, especially when the people are not even granted the courtesy of an oral argument.
This is the same Alabama Supreme Court that overturned two separate multi-billion dollar jury verdicts in cases brought by the people of Alabama against Exxon-Mobil. Juries of our peers found that the world's largest corporation had defrauded the citizens of Alabama out of millions in gas and oil royalties. Monetary damages awarded by the juries against Exxon-Mobil in that ruling (then dismissed by the Supreme Court) could have saved Alabama's PACT Program and could have eliminated the prorating of education budgets. Yet, in both the Medicaid and Exxon issues, the citizens of Alabama got nothing that the juries awarded to them thanks to this Alabama Supreme Court.
Supreme Court races are often overshadowed by other races because voters don't have enough information in order to compare the candidates. Of the state's 19 appellate judges, only one is a Democrat. The current High Court is in a crisis. Only you can bring balance and true justice back to the appellate court system in 2010 by giving some new candidates and some Democratic candidates a new chance next November. Let your vote be the final oral argument for justice in Alabama in 2010.
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