Prop. 100 Funding Letters Stir Charges of ‘Extortion’

Charges of extortion and manipulation flew in the insurance initiative fight Wednesday after sample fund-raising letters prepared by managers of the campaign for Proposition 100, backed by the California Trial Lawyers Assn., were leaked to rival insurance industry campaigners.

In the letters, sent out by manager Dick Woodward, lawyers were invited to write chiropractors and doctors they know and warn them that unless they contribute to the 100 campaign, lawyers might not be able to refer personal-injury clients to them after the November election.

For instance, a sample letter sent to chiropractors reads:

“Chiropractic Doctors across California are pledging 5% to 10% of the income they receive from Personal Injury work while others are writing checks for $1,500 or more. Your colleagues and mine and our clients and patients need you to do the same.

“My ability to refer patients rests on the outcome of the November election. The outcome will be a direct result of the contributions you and our colleagues make. . . .”

Scott Carpenter, a spokesman for the insurers’ campaign for Proposition 104, the no-fault auto initiative, and Proposition 106, the initiative to slash lawyers’ contingency fees, declared:

“We think it certainly approaches extortion. . . . It’s a thinly veiled attempt to try to coerce chiropractors, doctors and others to give contributions.”

But Patti Le Vine, a spokeswoman for the 100 campaign, replied:

“It’s not extortion. It’s not threatening the chiropractors. It laments the fact that if Proposition 104 should pass, trial lawyers would no longer have the ability to handle cases. The insurers are engaging in a form of manipulation by suggesting otherwise.”

Many chiropractors have said recently that they are supporting 100 and opposing 104 because they believe that 104’s no-fault plan would end claims payments for chiropractic care. The insurers, however, deny that it would.

Another part of the packet sent out by Woodward for the 100 campaign sought to silence trial lawyers from making statements on the campaign’s behalf during a period when the campaign is trying to emphasize its consumer, not its trial lawyer, support.

A memo addressed to all Trial Lawyer Assn. members told the attorneys:

“You may be learned on the subject, articulate and gifted in the art of persuasion. But, politically, this may be the wrong time or place for an attorney to be speaking for the measure.”

The memo went on to say that lawyers should neither respond to news media questions nor initiate any contact with the news media on their own unless they first get clearance from campaign coordinators.

Meanwhile, a separate fund-raising letter sent out on behalf of the Proposition 100 campaign by Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp also drew the insurers’ fire, largely because in four pages Van de Kamp concentrates on consumer support for the initiative and never mentions that the trial lawyers are the primary contributor.

A spokesman for Van de Kamp said the attorney general is on vacation and unavailable for a response.

In another development, an angry dispute has erupted within the Mothers Against Drunk Driving organization, after the state MADD organization voted in San Jose over the weekend to abandon already announced support of 100 and become neutral on all five insurance initiatives.

The 10-3 vote was challenged, however, and the matter has been referred to the national organization for resolution, state MADD administrator Pat Ramirez said Wednesday. She charged that some chapters have been pressured by insurers to change their position to neutrality on threat of possibly losing insurance benefits in the future.

Ramirez, acting for MADD, signed an official ballot pamphlet argument for 100, and it is too late to delete her name from that, since it has gone to the printer. But she said her personal position had been to urge the group to be neutral.