Facts No Obstacle To Democrats in Attacking Owen

Three months after an ugly smear campaign helped them kill Bush’s nomination of Federal District Court Judge Charles Pickering, Sr. to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary committee are working to thwart the nomination of popular Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen to the same court.

Once again, the facts are proving no obstacle to committee Democrats’ willingness to make wild charges against a Bush nominee

In a hearing on Owen’s nomination July 23, committee Democrats scrambled to create some pretext—aside from what they suspect to be her personal views on abortion—to use in "Borking" her. Although left-wing groups had succeeded in destroying Pickering with unproven allegations of racism, Democrats had difficulty demonstrating at Owen’s hearing that they had any real complaint against her other than her rulings in a series of cases involving Texas’s parental consent abortion law.

Misstating basic facts, committee Democrats dredged up vague allegations that Owen is overly sympathetic to big business, as well as a false charge that she had violated a section of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct. They also alleged that she is a "judicial activist," based on her willingness in three cases—against the majority of her court—to deny judicial exceptions to a 1999 Texas law requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions (see page 3). The criticism came despite the fact that Owen’s opinions in favor of parental notification in these cases were firmly based on standards set in Planned Parenthood v. Casey—a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld Roe v. Wade.

Owen, who was re-elected to the Texas bench in 2000 with 84% of the vote and received a unanimous "well-qualified" rating from the liberal American Bar Association, had to contend with several factual mistakes by her interrogators.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.) began by asking Owen about a 1996 personal injury case—Searcy v. Ford Motor Co.—in which she wrote the court’s opinion. Willie Searcy had been injured and paralyzed when his seat belt broke in a collision, and he sued Ford for damages. Feinstein first misstated the facts of the case, insinuating that Owen had delayed judgement so long that the plaintiff died while waiting for judgment. "[W]hile the year-and-a-half dragged by that you were supposed to be writing that opinion, one morning the respirator went out and he died," said Feinstein. "And the opinion you wrote said that the appeal should not be granted on the basis of faulty venue, that it was brought in the wrong venue, which had never been argued in either of the lower courts that handled the case."

"We remanded the case to the lower court, and it was three years later that Mr. Searcy unfortunately passed away," Owen said. "He did not pass away while the case was pending in my court." She added that venue actually had been argued in the lower courts, and was, by law, a decisive factor in the case. "There’s a statute in Texas that says if the case is filed in the wrong trial court, then reversal is mandatory."

Owen—along with four other justices—ruled that the case must be retried because the plaintiffs had sued in a county hundreds of miles from their home, the accident site, and Ford’s regional headquarters, solely on the pretext that there was a Ford dealership in that county. "This was essentially a forum-shopping issue," Owen said in the hearing. "Our court had to address the venue issue."

Senators Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) and Ted Kennedy (D.-Mass.) also attacked Owen for her alleged sympathy toward large corporations.

"You have developed a reputation for opinions which if not every time most of the time favor big business interests," said Leahy. He then cited a series of cases exactly as they appeared in a memo from the left-wing group People for the American Way (PFAW), repeatedly cutting off Owen’s answers.

Among the cases Leahy cited was that of a woman raped by a vacuum cleaner salesman. The woman sued the vacuum manufacturer, Kirby Corp., and the court found in her favor. In her dissent, however, Owen wrote that Kirby was not liable because the salesman was an independent contractor—not even for Kirby, but for another company that in turn was an independent contractor for Kirby. Under basic principles of tort law, she said, "you are not liable for the actions of independent contractors."

In an attempt to smear by association, Leahy also noted that Owen had received funds from Enron employees for her election campaigns. Because Texas justices are elected statewide to six-year terms, they all raise campaign contributions (see Human Events, April 8, 2002).

Kennedy’s questioning, also marked by factual error, including his repeating the same question three times, even after Owen had answer it. "I’m struck by the fact that when the court does rule in favor of consumers or victims of personal injury, you’re frequently in dissent," he said to Owen. "And you’ve never dissented from a case in which the consumer loses. . . Do you disagree that you’re among the most likely on the Texas Supreme Court to dissent from favoring—cases favoring a consumer or injured plaintiff?"

Owen immediately cited her 1996 dissent in Saenz v. Fidelity & Guaranty Insurance Underwriters, in which she had written—against the majority opinion—that a worker had been defrauded in a worker’s compensation settlement, and deserved a chance to reassert her claim.

Kennedy, not expecting Owen to have an answer, repeated the question: "Have you ever dissented over the objections of the majority and found for a consumer of plaintiff?"

When Owen again cited Saenz v. Fidelity, Kennedy shot back with the puzzling statement, "That wasn’t a majority case." Then he repeated the question a third time.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D.-Wis.) asked about allegations by the leftist group Alliance for Justice that Owen had violated the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct by setting up a 1998 meeting in which the pastor of her church asked then-Gov. George W. Bush for permission to conduct a prison ministry in a Texas women’s prison. Owen pointed out, to Feingold’s apparent satisfaction, that the code says only that judges "shall not solicit funds for any educational, religious, charitable, fraternal, or civic organization." Because neither she nor her church had asked for funds, Owen said, her actions were well within the rules.

Senators Dick Durbin (D.-Ill.) and Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.), abandoned all pretext and probed more directly for Owen’s personal views on abortion. Durbin asked her unambiguously what she believed about abortion (see page 3), and Schumer, after delivering a lecture that consumed more than the ten minutes allotted to him, posed a bizarre hypothetical: "It’s 1965. You are sitting in the Supreme Court of the United States. Chief Justice Warren comes into your chambers with a copy of the opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut, the seminal case that held there is a right to privacy in the Constitution. He asks for your thoughts on the opinion. . . . What do you tell him?"

Owen replied to both by stating that her personal views would not prevent her from upholding Supreme Court precedent as it currently stands.

Senate observers, including the ranking Republican on the committee, Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), told Human Events that Owen’s case demonstrates that Democrats are using what they believe to be her personal views on abortion as a litmus test of whether she can serve on the appellate bench. "I’m afraid that the main reason Justice Owen is being opposed is. . . because she is a woman in public life who is believed to have personal views that some maintain should be unacceptable for a woman in public life to have," Hatch said in the hearing.

Judiciary Democrats—most of whom hold safe Senate seats in liberal states—can kill Bush’s nominations in committee with no political consequences to themselves. Although they have acted on 59 of Bush’s 113 judicial nominations, they have held up 21 of the important 32 appellate court nominations.

Facts No Obstacle To Democrats

The sun rises in the east.

What else is new?

What amazes me is how vicious is the attack on corporations and "big companies" when so many people are working for these very companies the democrats love to revile and scorn! I myself work for the big GM and am the first to admit I wouldn't do better anywhere else when it comes to total employee benefits, etc....

...and received a unanimous "well-qualified" rating from the liberal American Bar Association

Is it fairly common for conservatives to get this rating or is this a bad sign that our nominee might not be all we'd hope for? Are we defending when we should cave on this one and then nominate someone that will really rile them up?

NOW will rape any woman nominee who is pro-life just as they will lynch any black who does not belong to the NAADNC! CommucRats are the lowest form of life. If it was not for the elite media and other DNC activists they would be extinct.

Pray for GW and the Truth

Well, they may incorporate us into working for the pure thrill of it without any pay and no time off for good behavior. Sort of how the ChiCom's organize some of their work force laborers.

Life according to democrass leaders is all importantly contingent upon abortion. Imagine an entire political platform, policy, agenda, manifesto is based on abortion.

Watching (on C-SPAN now) these dimwits...some of whom are criminals themselves...sitting in judgment of Priscilla Owen is bizarre. They only want her to answer one question.....are you opposed to abortion? Everything else is filler.

If the DemocRATs weren't so vile, this would be funny. The idiot senators are being fed these questions by their staff and by the "special interest groups" like PFAW, NOW, etc.. And the questions are so factually flawed that they make the questioner (the senators) look like the idiots that they are.

Schumer got on my nerves with his little diatribe against Hatch. He's so upset that Hatch would bring up the influence of "left wing groups" and says the right wing groups do the same thing (try to influence). Schumer totally understated the influence of groups like NOW, PFAW, etc.

I've always been bothered how the dems refuse to say abortion. Its always choice.

Just once I would love a nominee say s/he has no problem with reproductive choices just so long as killing the baby isn't one of them.

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