Angelos employees backing Biden

August 27, 2008

USA Today has a story today about Joe Biden’s ties to lawyers who specialize in asbestos litigation and his votes on measures that would affect this area of the law. (Hat tip: WSJ Law Blog.) Here’s the lede (yes, that’s how we spell it in journalism) of the story:

Sen. Joe Biden worked to defeat a bipartisan bill designed to curb asbestos lawsuits at a time his son’s law firm was filing them in Delaware and a former aide was lobbying against the measure, according to public records and interviews. 

The story notes that three of Biden’s largest contributors over his career have been firms specializing in plaintiff-side asbestos work. (The employees or PACs gave, not the firms themselves.)

You can probably see where this is going. The story doesn’t name the firms, but a quick trip to Open Secrets, the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics, shows that one of them — the one that gave the most money, in fact — is the Law Offices of Peter G. Angelos. Employees of Angelos’ firm have given Biden $156,250 since 1989, making the firm Biden’s fourth-largest contributor.

As you can imagine, Angelos’ lawyers were also kind to Biden during his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president this year. Employees of the firm gave him $50,750, making them his third-largest contributor.

USA Today notes that Barack Obama has touted his vote for 2005’s Class Action Fairness Act “as evidence he was willing to stand up to trial lawyers.” I wonder if that will be enough to keep Angelos’ lawyers from directing a whole mess of money Obama and Biden’s way this fall. I doubt it, especially since, as the story points out, Obama, like Biden, voted against a series of measures that would have limited asbestos litigation.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

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Posted by Jackie Sauter | Filed Under law, peter angelos | 1 Comment 

Bisciotti and Angelos: A double standard

January 2, 2008

First things first. Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti seems to be a great guy. He even returned my phone calls when I covered the sports-business beat at The Sun.

Bisciotti seemed genuinely torn up about firing Coach Brian Billick. But here’s a question: Why haven’t Baltimore’s sports columnists and sports talk show hosts beaten up Bisciotti for “meddling” in the Ravens’ football affairs with the same vengeance that they routinely beat up Peter Angelos with for “meddling” in the Orioles’ baseball affairs?

Is there one iota of difference?

To be clear, I think both Bisciotti and Angelos have every right to “meddle.” They own the teams. You can’t meddle in something that’s your’s.

The reason Bisciotti’s gotten a free pass is that the sports writers also think he’s a great guy. Angelos — well, not so much. (And to be fair, Angelos also always returned my phone calls. We even shared a cab once from Major League Baseball’s New York headquarters to Penn Station.)

But if they think it’s wrong for Angelos to have his hand in baseball decisions, it’s hard for me to imagine why they wouldn’t think it’s wrong for Bisciotti to have his hand in football decisions.

Am I crazy?

ED WALDMAN, Managing Editor/Business

Photo courtesy of scout.com. 

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Posted by Jackie Sauter | Filed Under Baltimore, Ravens, peter angelos, sports | 3 Comments 

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