Senator Ted Cruz is known for being an advocate of conservative ideals and has been working on the tort reform. However, several cases he worked on as a private lawyer in Morgan, Lewis & Bockius suggest that he previously defended cases with personal injury awards.
As reported by New York Times, it was recently revealed that Cruz's senate campaign did not wholly come from his savings but were partially funded by loans from Golden Sachs and Citibank. Moreover, a new report revealed that his work as a private attorney led him to defend on tort cases.
Before becoming a senator, Cruz previously worked on the tort reform for George W. Bush's 2000 campaign. He was eventually appointed as a Texas solicitor general where among where among state laws he defended was the tort reform law.
However, leaving his post as the solicitor general to become part of Houston's Morgan, Lewis & Bockius as a private lawyer meant working on the other side of the coin. According to ABA Journal, among the cases Cruz worked on were those of the daughter of Barbara Barber and Larry Selk.
Barber was a nursing home patient who was neglected and had bled to death while Selk was a mentally disabled man who was raped by an employee in the facility he was admitted to. Cruz also reportedly sought for $54 million damage award for Selk which ended with a settlement with the facility.
Cruz' ability in court was described by one of the attorneys in the case as "stunning in its persuasive power". As reported by The Wall Street Journal, a lawyer for one of the victims, Michael A. Gross, commended Cruz although he also noted that his ability to shift in opposite sides of the tort issue is hypocritical.
"Ted, I believe, based on my interactions with him, believed we had a righteous cause, and it was the right thing to do for this family to recover punitive damages for reprehensible conduct. For him to be arguing now that there ought to be tort reform is completely hypocritical", Gross said.
Ted Cruz's work in Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP were mainly concerned on labor disputes, intellectual property issues and many others. He sought and won a seat in the senate in 2012 for the Republican party.
