Madison County law firm big Biden donor

WASHINGTON — Employees of four law firms specializing in asbestos suits were four of the top 10 donors to Joe Biden's failed presidential campaign, records show. Among them was SimmonsCooper, a Madison County firm that has a close relationship with members of Biden's family.

Campaign records and interviews reflect a long and mutually beneficial relationship between the Illinois law firm and vice presidential nominee Biden, who as a senator from Delaware has been a steadfast supporter of trial lawyers.

From 2007 to Sept. 2, top asbestos-law firm employees donated $171,000 to Biden's presidential campaign.

All told, Biden's Senate campaign funds have received $4.9 million from law firms since 2003, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog group.


On two occasions, Biden voted against legislation that would have severely cut into the profits of firms handling asbestos cases. The bill was intended to offer relief for companies facing an avalanche of asbestos-related suits, like the ones filed by SimmonsCooper.

Biden and other opponents said the measure would have stripped victims of their right to sue, a principle Biden has embraced throughout his Senate career, said David Wade, a Biden campaign spokesman. Asbestos is the catalyst for a potentially deadly lung disease called mesothelioma.

Americans are "tired of big powerful corporate interests writing the rules and sticking it to the little guy," Wade said in an e-mail responding to questions from the Post-Dispatch. "In Joe Biden, they've got a champion with a 35-year Senate record defending victims' rights to have their day in court and hold big interests accountable."

LONG RELATIONSHIP

No firm's members in recent years have contributed more to Biden's efforts than those of SimmonsCooper LLC, which has branches in East Alton, Chicago and El Segundo, Calif.

Since 2001, SimmonsCooper employees have contributed $196,050 to Biden's Senate and presidential campaigns.

The relationship between Biden's family and SimmonsCooper runs deeper than campaign donations. In 2005, as the Madison County Record originally reported, SimmonsCooper partnered on some of its asbestos cases with a Delaware firm that Biden's son Beau had just joined.

The Los Angeles Times reported recently that in 2006, Biden's brother James and youngest son, Hunter, secured a pledge for a $2 million investment from SimmonsCooper for a hedge fund company the Bidens wanted to purchase.

The Bidens collected half the investment from SimmonsCooper but later returned the money when the deal fell through, according to Nicholas Gravante Jr., a lawyer representing Hunter and James Biden.

Wade said Beau and Hunter Biden's relationship with SimmonsCooper has nothing to do with the senator.

"Hunter Biden met Jeff Cooper (SimmonsCooper's former managing partner) several years ago, and they became good friends and socialized together long before they went into business," Wade said. "Sen. Biden's opposition to the asbestos bill was well-established long before his son represented mesothelioma victims."

SimmonsCooper declined to comment for this story.

But Cooper told the Times last month that SimmonsCooper teamed up with the Delaware firm — Bifferato, Gentilotti & Biden — partly because of his friendship with Beau Biden and partly because it was "one of the best firms in the state." Said Cooper, "It was only natural that we worked with my friend Beau Biden and his firm."

SimmonsCooper partner Michael Angelides told the Times that the firm supports a lot of Democrats and described Biden as "a real champion for consumer rights issues."

ASBESTOS BILL

A former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden twice helped block legislation that would have established a trust fund, bankrolled by insurers and companies with asbestos claims against them, to provide financial support for asbestos victims. In exchange for paying into the fund, the companies would have been shielded from asbestos lawsuits.

In 2004, Biden argued that the trust fund could not guarantee compensation for all victims, and he successfully attached an amendment allowing victims to return to court if the fund ran out of money.

The bill's Republican supporters argued that the trust fund would help ensure that the people who were actually sick received support, instead of allowing trial lawyers to intimidate businesses into settlements.

"While the personal injury lawyers are busy making themselves into millionaires, they are depriving the truly sick of available resources," Sen. Orrin Hatch said in a Senate speech in 2004.

Under the weight of Biden's amendment, the bill collapsed.

"He consistently opposed the asbestos bill because it was unfair," Wade said. "He thought it was dead wrong that if the trust fund ran out of money for the victims, they couldn't even get their rights back."

The Senate took up a similar asbestos measure two years later, with a heftier trust fund — $140 billion — for asbestos victims.

At the time, an independent study showed there had already been more than 700,000 lawsuits filed alleging asbestos-related illnesses, including mesothelioma. The litigation costs and insurance claims associated with asbestos claims had amounted to more than $70 billion, bankrupting almost 80 companies, according to the Office of Legislative Policy Analysis.

But Biden continued to express concern that victims would get shut out.

"The real problem is that there are a lot of people out there suffering from the effects of asbestos," Biden said during Senate floor speech in 2006. "There are not a lot of companies out there with the money to pay all of these claims. There is the concern that some of the very companies we have to go to, to recover from, may very well declare bankruptcy."

He added, "The victims are not in this bill."

The bill fell one vote shy of the 60 it needed to end a filibuster, and it has not been resurrected.

Ed Murnane is president of the Illinois Civil Justice League, a business advocacy group that lobbies for tort reform and supported the Senate legislation.

"It's unfortunate that this legislation was not passed," he said in an interview this week. "I assume there will be other attempts to do it, but there's a lot of politics involved."

Murnane said things have improved in Madison County, where SimmonsCooper is filing fewer asbestos cases.

"Hopefully the election is not going to result in the door opening once again, the door that appeared to be closing."

'TERRIBLE INJUSTICE'

Michael Thornton, a partner at Boston-based Thornton and Naumes LLP, whose firm practices asbestos litigation and raised money for Biden's presidential bid, said the asbestos legislation constituted a "terrible injustice."

"Sen. Biden has been a trial-lawyer advocate for many terms in the Senate," Thornton said. "We represent victims, we think it's in the best interest of our clients, if they have an opportunity, to go to court. Sen. Biden agrees."

Before the asbestos bill was derailed, SimmonsCooper started trying some of its asbestos litigation in Delaware, with the help of the firm where Biden's son practiced.

"SimmonsCooper didn't hire Beau," Wade said. "He litigated the cases in Delaware, he handled the documents, managed the court proceedings, did the work, and was compensated as co-counsel."

SimmonsCooper continues to rely on the firm as its local counsel, although Beau Biden has left the partnership. He is now Delaware's attorney general and the captain of a National Guard unit awaiting deployment to Iraq.

In addition to SimmonsCooper, Biden's presidential bid received campaign donations from employees at other law firms that specialize in asbestos litigations, including the Law Offices of Peter Angelos, New York's Weitz & Luxenberg and Thornton and Naumes LLP.