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Ohio News |
Article published Wednesday, October 23, 2002
CAMPAIGN AD WATCH
Ex-Brush worker hammers Stratton over beryllium
case
BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU
COLUMBUS
- The court battle over Brush Wellman and the effects of chronic
beryllium disease on its workers has worked its way into the fight
for control of the Ohio Supreme Court.
In a new television
commercial financed by trial lawyers, teachers, and labor, a former
Brush worker suffering from the often fatal lung disease takes a
swing at incumbent Republican Justice Evelyn Stratton, using her
sentencing nickname against her.
"Eve Stratton calls herself
the Velvet Hammer," says David Norgard. "Yeah, corporations get the
velvet. Ohio families get the hammer."
The court ruled 4-3 in
May that the two-year statute of limitations for Mr. Norgard’s case
against Brush began running when he learned in 1995 of "facts" from
an Arizona attorney that the company had known about the risks
beryllium exposure posed to employees. The decision overturned a
lower-court ruling and resuscitated Mr. Norgard’s 1997
lawsuit.
Justice Stratton was among the minority who held
that the clock began ticking when Mr. Norgard, an employee of
Cleveland-based Brush’s Elmore plant, learned he had the disease in
1992.
"They picked this case to exploit a person’s pain and
suffering to the maximum and to sink to new lows," said Justice
Stratton. "This was strictly a legal issue. It had nothing to do
with corporations or workers.
"It was a
statute-of-limitations case and this court expanded the statute
judiciously instead of leaving it to the legislature to do," she
said. "It went against U.S. Supreme Court law. This has to do with
my judicial restraint philosophy. It’s not an anti-worker
philosophy."
Mr. Norgard said yesterday he didn’t come up
with the Velvet Hammer comment on his own. "I didn’t actually write
the script," he said. "That was presented to me. But she did vote
against me in the Ohio Supreme Court case."
The ad finishes
with a plug from Mr. Norgard for the two Democrats - Hamilton County
Municipal Judge Tim Black, who is running against Maureen O’Connor,
and Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Janet Burnside, who is
challenging Justice Stratton.
Both Democrats have joined the
Republicans in condemning such negative ads, but the group said that
would not deter it from airing this ad as scheduled, beginning last
night.
At stake is the court’s current 4-3 philosophical
divide, as witnessed in the Norgard case, that Republicans have
attempted to portray as anti-business and Democrats have
characterized as pro-family.
"The notion that a company would
influence the Supreme Court of Ohio or any single justice is
absurd," said Brush spokesman Patrick Carpenter. "That is not
something Brush Wellman would be party to."
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