Last week Ralph Nader finally got his day in court.
It's a day he and his legal team have been groping their way toward for six years, and it says a lot about the state of Pennsylvania politics that Mr. Nader had to go to Washington, D.C., to be heard.
Worse still, the fallout from this state's shameful corruption -- if the courts allow its consequences to stand -- could have a dangerous impact on third-party candidacies across the nation.
The problem is in some sense eternal: Those acting in good faith are always a step or two behind the scheming and corrupt. In another sense, though, the problem is parochial: Judges may be esteeming their colleagues on the bench a little more highly than the facts warrant.
A brief recap: Partners at the Reed Smith law firm's Pittsburgh office led the effort to keep Mr. Nader's name off Pennsylvania's 2004 presidential ballot by challenging the signatures on his petitions.
Commonwealth Court found in the challengers' favor. Judge James Gardner Colins called the Nader petitions "the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated on this court," and the court ordered Mr. Nader and his running mate Peter Camejo to pay Reed Smith $81,000 in costs.
Mr. Nader appealed to the state Supreme Court and again lost. But comparing the majority and dissenting opinions is a sobering pursuit. Justice Thomas Saylor carefully reviewed the grounds on which the lower court rejected signatures, found its standard "more stringent" than state law indicated and pointed out that Judge Colins' description -- "most deceitful and fraudulent etc." -- was an exaggeration not supported by the lower court's own findings.
The brief majority opinion repeated Judge Colins' intemperate language and used it as justification for imposing costs -- costs which Mr. Nader's team call "unconstitutional" and "unprecedented in American history," costs he predicts will have a chilling effect on future independent candidacies. (Judge Colins retired in 2008.)
Here's where "Nader Part 2" begins: It was only after this process had played out that the Nader team discovered what it considers game-changing conflicts of interest. Reed Smith attorneys had been defending Chief Justice Ralph Cappy against ethics charges at the same time the state Supreme Court was weighing Mr. Nader's appeal.
"That doesn't pass the laugh test: You cannot represent and appear before a judge at the same time," said Oliver Hall, Mr. Nader's attorney. (Justice Cappy retired in 2008 and died last year.) In fact, five of the seven justices had ties to the firm, Mr. Hall said, either as clients, former employees and recipients of campaign donations.
By this time -- November 2007 -- the case had moved to Washington because Reed Smith had initiated attachment proceedings against Mr. Nader's bank accounts there. Alleging that the undisclosed ties between Reed Smith and this state's Supreme Court violated Mr. Nader's right to due process, his lawyers asked the D.C. court to void the financial judgment. Their motion was denied.
That such conflicts of interest don't have to be disclosed in this state should alarm anyone interested in good government.
For two years now, it's been the exercise in good government known as "Bonusgate" giving Mr. Nader's cause any gasp of life, but each new scandalous revelation has come just a little too late to do him -- and the public -- any good.
As soon as the first Bonusgate presentment revealed in July 2008 that Democratic legislative staffers had illegally contributed many hours to the Nader petition challenge, Mr. Nader asked the Commonwealth Court to waive the $81,000 judgment. But the extent of the illegality and the specific connection to the Reed Smith office was not yet known, and his request was denied.
During the trial of Mike Veon, however, a former staffer revealed that a dozen state employees worked morning to midnight, including weekends, going "line by line through each of the petitions to make challenges to it." As they finished, she testified, she would bring boxes to Reed Smith partner Efrem Grail and take back more to do.
"As far as we knew, what we had was the work product of volunteers," Reed Smith partner Daniel Booker said.
But Mr. Nader's lawyers argue that under Pennsylvania's Rules of Civil Procedure, attorneys have an "affirmative duty" to conduct "a pre-filing inquiry into both the facts and the law" relating to any paper they file with the court. Since much work to prepare the challenge was "the product of a criminal conspiracy," the Nader team last week asked the D.C. Court of Appeals to vacate the judgment.
This argument is "totally unfounded," Mr. Booker said, "and so far, at least, the courts in Pennsylvania and D.C. have agreed with us."
Not quite: Damning details from the Veon trial were not available the last time a court reviewed this matter. But D.C. judges hearing this appeal last week reportedly looked "skeptical" of the Nader argument.
Judges are loath to overturn one another's decisions. But if this latest panel were to read every opinion in this whole sorry mess, I like to think they'd consider it. And I'd like to think that, regardless of what the law allows and what some not-very-diligent judges may opine, someone at the venerable Reed Smith firm is ashamed to be on the wrong side of this deplorable matter.
I see two bright spots: First, Mr. Nader had the moral satisfaction of turning Judge Colin's ridiculous hyperbole back on his opponents when he called the unfolding "Bonusgate" scandal "one of the most fraudulent and deceitful exercises ever perpetrated on Pennsylvania voters."
He's right, which is the other bright spot: Finally learning the extent of the corruption should galvanize us to clean out the cesspool in Harrisburg.
First Published: April 26, 2010, 4:00 a.m.
