http://archive.nytimes.com/2003/02/25/opinion/25TUE4.html
Deborah Cook Is the Typical Bush Judicial Nominee -- So Watch Out By ADAM COHEN The case before the Ohio Supreme Court looked simple enough. Thomas Davis, a forklift operator at an Ohio Wal-Mart, was crushed to death at work. When his widow sued, Wal-Mart fought hard � and its employees may have lied and destroyed evidence. When she learned of the possible deception, Mrs. Davis went to court to try to add an important legal claim. Too bad, Wal-Mart argued. She had missed her chance � even if it did trick her by lying. As they say in law school, What result? The predominantly Republican court properly ruled, 6 to 1, that Wal-Mart's legal defense had been bogus. Even if it wasn't, the court held, it would be fundamentally unjust "to reward a party for misrepresenting or destroying evidence." Only one justice took Wal-Mart's side. That justice was Deborah Cook. She is now President Bush's nominee to fill a vacancy on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati. Ms. Cook is no Miguel Estrada, the so-called conservative "stealth nominee," who is facing a Senate filibuster. Blacks are not rallying against her, the way they are against Charles Pickering, the Trent Lott prot�g� who lobbied the Justice Department to go easy on a convicted cross-burner. Disabled people are not lined up against her, as they are against Jeffrey Sutton, who argued a major case that weakened the Americans With Disabilities Act. Deborah Cook, a 51-year-old onetime corporate lawyer from Akron, Ohio, may actually be the most utterly typical of the Bush administration's judicial nominees. Which is why, based on her judicial record, we should all be very worried about the future of the federal courts. In eight years on the Ohio Supreme Court, Justice Cook has been a steady voice against injured workers, discrimination victims and consumers. The court's most prolific dissenter, she frequently breaks with her Republican colleagues to side with big business and insurance companies. Often she reaches for a harsh legal technicality to send a hapless victim home empty-handed. Take David Norgard, a beryllium plant worker in Elmore. When he developed skin ulcers, dizziness and coughing fits, he suspected beryllium poisoning, but his company told him he was fine. It didn't tell him his blood tests showed he was unusually sensitive to beryllium � and that it had filed a workers' compensation claim on his behalf. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Norgard could sue, but Justice Cook argued that it was too late. The statute of limitations started running, she said, when he first suspected he was being poisoned, not when he learned his employer was lying about it. Justice Cook's dissents in age-discrimination cases have taken tortuous paths to leave older workers in the lurch. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Michael Oker, an attorney fired by Ameritech, could sue for age bias. But Justice Cook disagreed, saying the 180-day period for filing a complaint began not when he was fired, but months before he left the job. The court ruled that Phyllis Ruth Mauzy, a 61-year-old office manager, could proceed against an employer who berated her in front of her colleagues, pressed her to retire and wrote in her final evaluation, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." But Justice Cook would have thrown the case out before Ms. Mauzy appeared before a jury. In case after case, Justice Cook has found ways to protect corporations pestered by sick or fired workers. When a bank argued that a jury's sex-discrimination verdict should be thrown out because the judge improperly "steered" the jurors to their result, Justice Cook was the only member of the Ohio Supreme Court to buy it. When a female Dairy Mart employee sued for psychological injuries after she was robbed while working alone, Justice Cook argued, in dissent, that the woman had no claim � a position a majority of the court called "absurd." At Judge Cook's confirmation hearing, even the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Orrin Hatch, a strong supporter, felt a need to ask her why she dissents so often. It is not, "as has been implied," she said, "a matter of my particular bent or preference for any side of a case." She dissents, she said, when she disagrees about the law. There were senators who were prepared to explore the matter further. But Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, in an extraordinary move, had scheduled a single confirmation hearing for Justice Cook, Mr. Sutton and a third nominee. Democratic senators devoted most of their question time to Mr. Sutton. Justice Cook was all but ignored. When Senator Charles Schumer asked for her to return for more questions, Senator Hatch refused, saying it would not be fair to Justice Cook. The Bush administration has a long list of Deborah Cooks � nominees who are not stirring controversy, but who will radically reshape the federal judiciary for a generation. The administration is loading the courts with judges who rule in favor of discriminating companies, abusive bosses and employers who injure their workers and lie about it. And it is counting on the rest of us not to notice. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
