The State Farm Insurance Company is in hot water as new evidence has emerged showing that they funneled money into the campaign of a judge who threw out. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Peter Mougey discuss this issue.
Transcript:
Mike Papantonio: The State Farm Insurance Company is in hot water as new evidence has emerged showing that they funneled money into the campaign of a judge who threw out, just happened to have thrown out, a billion dollar judgment against the company. What did they do, Peter? They start pumping more than $4 million into a campaign on PR to try to change all this. So, they do get their judge elected, right?
Peter Mougey: Oh, they do. Not only is he elected, but he ends up being the Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.
Mike Papantonio: Let me point out. That’s in state court.
Peter Mougey: Absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: Because this now has a federal court looking at it. But tell us what happened here. These facts are crazy.
Peter Mougey: It is crazy. State Farm decided, I’ll tell you what, we think we can unwind this billion dollar judgment by dumping a few million dollars into this campaign. When that judge gets on the bench, he’s going to help us unwind our billion dollar judgment.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Peter Mougey: Hey, it’s cheap. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper to pay the-
Mike Papantonio: To paying a billion dollars.
Peter Mougey: They went out and organized a State Farm meeting. They went out and organized an entire infrastructure to help get this guy elected. They pumped $4 million into the campaign through various entities. They ended up ultimately getting the judge [crosstalk 00:01:13].
Mike Papantonio: What’s so interesting when you understand what this company was hit for, State Farm was hit for selling parts to cars that were substandard parts. In other words, they would say to a body shop, they’d have these scams with body shops and the body shop would take a part that should have cost a hundred dollars, but it costs $50 because it wasn’t the right part. It was a substandard part. So, they caught them doing this. Jury comes back and does what you would expect. They get hammered.
Peter Mougey: Yeah. A billion dollars.
Mike Papantonio: Billion-
Peter Mougey: I mean, crazy numbers.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Peter Mougey: So, we can get that unwound by pumping money into a campaign for one of the elected officials.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Peter Mougey: I mean, it’s just … Only in Illinois. I mean, it-
Mike Papantonio: Well, let me just tell you. This federal judge, Herndon, he’s a judge you do not play with. I’ve been in front of him. We’ve been in trial in front of him all the way back to the Yaz cases. He is a serious business federal judge. My call on this is this company’s in bad shape because this federal judge, State Farm tried to get the federal case dismissed because what had happened is there was a RICO kind of action brought against State Farm for trying to pump money into this judge to get the judge to dismiss the case.
Peter Mougey: It’s a RICO case.
Mike Papantonio: It’s a RICO case.
Peter Mougey: It’s organized crime. They filed a case. It’s a RICO case and he said no [crosstalk 00:02:42].
Mike Papantonio: The federal judge says, “I want to hear more about this thing.”
Peter Mougey: This has got legs, these things.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. He refused to dismiss the case.
Peter Mougey: Throw it out. That’s right.
Mike Papantonio: I think State Farm’s in trouble. Really, as you look at this, this judge should be in very serious trouble as these facts come out.