August 5, 2004

State court justice criticizes negative ad campaign

CHARLESTON (AP) -- West Virginia's lawyers have wrongly stood silent amid an advertising attack campaign that blames the state's court system for many of the Mountain State's woes, Supreme Court Justice Larry Starcher contends.

''It is a bald-faced lie to say that the West Virginia Supreme Court's decisions are a major cause of the economic problems that our state has faced for generations,'' Starcher, a former Monongalia County Circuit Court judge, wrote in the West Virginia Lawyer, the State Bar's monthly magazine.

In the edition mailed out this week, Starcher targets the pricey ad campaign waged by the state Chamber of Commerce in advance of the May primary.

Expected to resurface before the November election, the ads linked problems with the state's job market, health care system and Workers' Compensation program to recent court rulings.

With its campaign, the chamber has pushed for a Supreme Court that never finds fault with the Legislature or the executive branch, Starcher contends.