We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. Exposing hypocrisy is stupendously delicious! So we’re in a 
feeding frenzy today over this little item from Texans for Public Justice (TPJ).
According to TPJ,
Lawyers for Dallas billionaire T. Boone Pickens—who spent $1 million over the last four years to slam courtroom doors in the faces of Texas plaintiffs—traveled 1,500 miles this month to file a $60 million lawsuit against the bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers. That takes what people in Manhattan, where Pickens filed his lawsuit, call “chutzpah.”
The $1 million that Pickens gave to Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR) [the anti-consumer “tort reform” group] makes him the No. 2 donor to Texas’ biggest special-interest PAC. On behalf of the wealthy businessmen who bankroll it, TLR promotes severe restrictions on Texas’ civil-justice system.
What makes this story so especially mouth-watering is that T. Boone’s sprint toward the courthouse door was not an unusual occurrence for a TLR member. By April 1995, shortly after TLR helped lobby for legislation that capped punitive damages, limited governmental and professional liability, undermined joint and several liability and decimated Texas’ Deceptive Claims Practices Act, TLR Board members had themselves filed over 60 lawsuits either personally or as business owners.
Yes, civil justice fans, the jacket of T. Boone’s book, The First Billion is the Hardest, may identify the oil tycoon as the “Oracle of Oil,” but there can be no doubt—he is also a delectable “Harbinger of Hypocrisy.”
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