Letters to the Star Tribune

West's President wrote employees promising 'helpful tips' on rebutting the report

About 40 subscribers, many of whom were employees of West Publishing Co., dropped the newspaper because of its March 5-6 series that said federal judges, including four present Supreme Court justices, have accepted trips to luxury hotels and resorts paid for by West since 1982. The jurists met to select the winner of the Edward J. Devitt Distinguished Service to Justice Award, a $15,000 prize established by West to honor the former federal judge from St. Paul. No laws were broken, the articles said, but some ethicists quoted said the judges should have excused themselves or, at a minimum, disclosed their contacts with West to all parties. Since 1983 the Supreme Court has declined to review five cases that lower courts had decided in West's favor. The most recent Supreme Court justice to serve on the committee, Anthony Kennedy, defended his action before a congressional committee last week. He said being the guest of West "is no different from a bar association paying for a justice to come and give a speech." The first article said West President Vance Opperman wrote employees before the series began "promising 'helpful tips' on rebutting the report with letters to the editor or 'among your contacts in the community.'" One of those employees is Kurt Olson, who said he canceled because the articles were "vindictive and overblown." Devoting almost six pages to the story last Sunday was overkill, Olson said.

The principle of checks and balances is hurt by the appearance of cozy arrangements

Of about 50 callers and writers, 90 percent supported West's contention that the article "was just plain wrong." Many said that the newspaper should be supporting a company that employs 4,500 in Minnesota, often quoting from the articles that said West has not violated any laws. Dick McAnelly, whose wife is a West employee, said the series was ill-founded considering what West has done for the community. "It gave its St. Paul facility to Ramsey County when it moved to Eagan; never had any layoffs." The president and dean of the William Mitchell College of Law, James F. Hogg, wrote: "The large number of judges included in your stories is clearly proof, in itself, that many of our most distinguished legal names saw nothing wrong in the activities your stories recounted." Among the minority were Thaddeus Austin, who wrote: "Acceptance of gifts by judges must inevitably place a heavy thumb upon the scales" of justice, and Donnie Larson, Backus, Minn., who phoned: "My mom told me a long time ago, you can get anything you want if the price is right." A reader who identified herself as Mrs. Wood Clemons was the most introspective. "I know people who work for West. It is a very solid company. Those things go on every day (in business) and everybody knows it. I have mixed feelings. You can't survive being lily-white. You have to survive in the climate that exists. I can't say (what West did) is right or wrong." I asked two public relations executives and a University of Minnesota professor who deal with corporate ethics on a regular basis to pass judgment on West's judging process. Norman Bowie, who holds the Elmer L. Andersen Chair in Corporate Responsibility in the Carlson School of Management, said: "Over the past decade the American public has become a lot more sensitive about the appearance of conflict of interest. The Supreme Court is something special. You have to be increasingly sensitive where the public holds you to a higher standard." John Beardsley, chairman of Padilla, Speer, Beardsley Inc., and president of the Public Relations Society of America, said: "What West and the judges and justices did may have been legal but it doesn't pass the smell test. Recruiting judges for a noble purpose is fine, but putting them up in luxury pushes the boundary of propriety." David Mona, chairman of Mona, Meyer, McGrath & Gavin, said: "What might have been appropriate since the program started would have been a periodic review of contemporary standards. Selecting a worthy recipient could have been accomplished equally well at a location in Washington. Even that, by today's standards, doesn't erase the conflict of interest question." Comment: Maybe reader Olson has a point about overkill, not because of the value of in-depth reporting, but because readers can be intimidated by volume. The longer the presentation, the fewer the number of people who will stick with it. But was it, as Olson said, vindictive? Not if the role of a newspaper is to examine even the perception of monkey business by those frocked as guardians of justice. The principle of checks and balances in government is not enhanced by the appearance of cozy arrangements between the court and a litigant. West could just as well have avoided criticism by selecting former presidents of the American Bar Association as judges. Kennedy's assertion that accepting posh perks to serve on the West committee is no different than a justice addressing a bar association at the group's expense is a convoluted comparison that dilutes esteem for the highest court in the land. And media that took Kennedy's advice and looked the other way would be no less vulnerable than the parties to such liaisons.