While serving in the state legislature, Morgan Carroll saw a lot of bills that had an impact on her day job as a trail lawyer. In cases where lawmakers or judges are in positions to rule on issues that would drive business to their organizations, situational ethics would dictate that a compromised official would recuse herself. Article V of the Colorado Constitution also requires this for state lawmakers.
Unfortunately for Coloradans, neither the state constitution nor common sense ethics seemed to deter Carroll from using her position to further a personal and professional financial agenda. In fact, her record in the state legislature is replete with examples of massive conflicts where Carroll refused to recuse herself.
While Carroll claims on her campaign website that our “government should not be for sale,” she didn’t seem to mind putting the interests of her fellow trial lawyers ahead of working class Colorado families struggling to afford housing in our state. As President of the Colorado Senate, Carroll was the one person who prevented the passage of commons sense construction defects reform.
Today, Coloradans are still suffering from the repercussions of her self-dealing with this matter. Low cost, multi-family residential condo projects are not being built in this state because of the draconian legal environment that Carroll and her trial lawyer friends support, and working class families are suffering.
As a state representative in 2006, Carroll heard testimony against the Good Samaritan Healthcare Law from the founder of the personal injury law firm that she would later join. The Good Samaritan Healthcare Law was a common sense proposal to shield volunteer healthcare workers from junk lawsuits stemming from routine checkups and screenings. Carroll sided with her fellow trial lawyers, and against volunteer doctors and nurses after taking in her future employer’s testimony.
In January 2013, Carroll had just started a new job at the law firm Bachus & Schanker – odd timing since her start date was eight days before the opening of the legislature, where nearly all of her time would be devoted for the next five months. Luckily for Carroll and her employer, it wasn’t a total loss, as she was sponsor and able to vote for laws that would provide a direct financial benefit to her employer.
And it did not take long for Carroll to find a massive conflict of interest that would benefit her new employer, the so-caled Job Protection and Civil Rights Enforcement Act of 2013. This bill proposed massive benefits for lawyers like Carroll; legal fees would be covered, and punitive awards would be allowed as well.
Instead of doing the right thing and recusing herself from voting on this legislation she actually doubled down and sponsored it.
Time and time again, Morgan Carroll used her position in the state legislature for personal and professional gain, to the direct determent of Colorado working families. Now she wants the voters of the 6th CD to send her to Washington, where we can only assume she will be up to the same deceptive practices.