Hiring a public relations firm to handle a company's marketing is one thing, hiring one as part of a lawsuit defense strategy to help launch an attack on the judicial system seems like a completely different kind of public relations. When it got involved as part of the defense against a class-action lawsuit accusing chemical producer Syngenta of water pollution, a Chicago PR firm decided to launch new kind of marketing campaign - one that paints the local justice system as a "judicial hellhole."
Since several pro-business groups have criticized Madison County, Illinois, as being too plaintiff-friendly, a PR firm hired by Syngenta decided to publicize the local court system as a "jackpot [of] justice."
A Madison County court recently reviewed previously undisclosed communications between Syngenta and its PR firm, uncovering a strategy to make Syngenta and its chemical herbicide product look good by creating "a hostile attitude toward the Madison County judicial system." The judge granted plaintiffs' attorneys request to turn over the documents as part of pretrial discovery.
More concerning than the specifics of the class-action - which alleges that Syngenta and other atrazine chemical producers have created an herbicide known to run off farm fields and pollute drinking water - is the example of yet another strategy used by big business to attempt to undermine justice by spending millions of dollars. By launching a public relations attack on the judicial system, large companies are trying to "prevent [people] from exercising their right to seek damages for injuries caused by corporate misconduct, defective products, fraud and deceptive practices," noted plaintiffs' counsel.
Unfortunately, corporations using their deep pockets to influence how justice and governing systems work is not something isolated to Madison County. Evidence of big business spending money to influence this nation's systems will likely continue, particularly since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United last year overturned a 20-year-old ruling that disallowed corporations from contributing freely to political and judicial campaigns. With fewer restrictions on campaign financing and deep pockets to pull from, there is no telling what measures large corporations will take to continue to subvert our nation's judicial and governing systems at work.
