Chicago PR Firm Recommended Judicial Hellhole Defense in Pollution Suit, Judge Says
A public relations company advised its corporate client it could gain ground in a civil suit by playing up an Illinois county’s designation as a judicial hellhole by tort critics, a judge overseeing the case has revealed.
Agribusiness company Syngenta is accused of polluting groundwater with weed killer containing atrazine in the suit filed on behalf of nearly 100 water and sanitary districts, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. In a ruling on Wednesday, Judge William Mudge of Madison County, Ill., ordered release of the recommendation by public relations firm Jayne Thompson & Associates, owned by the wife of former Illinois Gov. James Thompson, according to a press release and the Dispatch.
The JTA firm set out its ideas in a 13-page proposal sent to a Syngenta corporate communications manager in 2005. According to Mudge, JTA “outlines a plan to tie the defense of this action into a negative public relations campaign that castigates the Madison County judicial system as a ‘judicial hellhole’ and a source of ‘jackpot justice.’ ”
Syngenta had argued the proposal should not be released in discovery because it was material prepared by a “litigation consultant.”
