It is an open secret at the Iowa General Assembly that most of the deal-making — especially the slimy, despicable, Tammany Hall variety — gets done in the closing hours of the session. And this year, some of the backroom deals are doozies.
One of the all-time genius power grabs may be about to go down in the Iowa House. A peculiar, little-noticed bill parading as a “good government” measure is in the last stages of a curious route to the House floor.
Red flag one: it has been timed to the closing hours of the session.
Red flag two: it is a bill making structural changes to the Iowa judiciary, and it came through the Ways and Means Committee — not Judiciary. The members who theoretically know the most about the functioning of the state’s courts have been routed around.
Red flag three: the bill is being floor-managed and publicly championed in the Senate by Mike Bousselot, the former head of external relations for Summit Agricultural Group, the parent company of Summit Carbon Solutions. Bousselot has been the subject of an Iowa Senate ethics complaint over his work on prior pipeline-related legislation, on the basis of those very ties. The complaint was tabled. The ties remain.
The bill is to expand the business court, which sounds tame enough — until you read the details.
The idea behind a business court is sound. In an increasingly complex commercial legal environment, wouldn’t it be useful to have a court where the sharpest brains in business law are concentrated, rather than splitting their time between commercial cases, criminal trials, and family law? What’s not to love?
Now the details.
Iowa already has a business court. It has eight judges, distributed across the state — Bettendorf, Burlington, Des Moines, LeClaire, Mason City, Waterloo. Cases enter only by joint consent of the parties, or by motion granted by the chief judge of the local district. It has run quietly and well since 2013.
Senate File 639 dissolves all of that. The new court will have only two (possibly three) judges. The bill does not say where they will sit, but full-time judges with statewide jurisdiction and dedicated administrative infrastructure will, in practical effect, sit in Des Moines. As a practical matter, full-time statewide business-court judges and their supporting infrastructure are overwhelmingly likely to gravitate to Des Moines. The judges will be appointed by the governor.
And the new court will not be voluntary. If a case fits the bill’s profile, that will be pretty much the end of the discussion. Either party can pull the case in unilaterally. The defendant who would prefer to litigate before their local county’s district court judge has no consent right.
Under the pending House amendment lowering the threshold to $200,000, nearly every breach of contract dispute in Iowa above that figure — every land sale dispute, every farm sale dispute, every commercial easement dispute, every trade secret dispute, every shareholder dispute, every commercial real estate dispute — will run through this new court.
That means all of Iowa’s published commercial common law going forward will be authored by two judges. Two people. Almost certainly drawn from the Des Moines establishment. That’s the same establishment that hired Ian Roberts to run the Des Moines Public Schools without noticing he was a fugitive on federal firearms charges, and the same establishment that thought an industrial-scale warrant-resolution clinic — releasing thousands of warrants in a single afternoon, including a warrant for a woman who was charged with murder one week later — was a sound piece of public administration.
Speaking of pipelines, guess where commercial disputes involving Summit Carbon Solutions easements will now likely be litigated? That’s right. Before two judges in Des Moines. Summit might not have to worry about tough Shelby, Floyd, or Webster County judges again.
Guess where farm sale disputes statewide now will be heard? Same answer. Two judges. Des Moines.
Guess who will handle Iowa apartment building disputes, Main Street commercial real estate disputes, grain elevator disputes, and small-town commercial lease disputes? Same answer.
What does this mean for small-town Iowa?
It means the Red Oak law firm that has handled the local LLC’s legal work for thirty years gets bypassed when the LLC’s apartment building becomes the subject of a warranty claim — because the case is now in a Des Moines specialty court before a Des Moines specialty bar at Des Moines specialty rates.
It means the Cherokee firm that has represented farm clients in easement disputes for two generations is replaced, on the next dispute, by a Des Moines firm with “business court experience.”
It means that within ten years, very few remaining small-town general practitioners will be able to compete in the kind of commercial work that has historically anchored the rural and regional bar.
And it means that the slow drying-up of small-town legal practice — already an access-to-justice emergency, recognized as such by the Iowa State Bar Association, the Iowa Supreme Court, and both Iowa law schools — accelerates.
This bill is reportedly to be worked on in the middle of the night, on Saturday — tomorrow.
So much for clean government in Iowa.
But nicely played, Summit Carbon Solutions. Nicely played indeed.
It sounds just like what Renolds wants. She will sign it in a heartbeat. It appears as though She has been bought off . Not what’s good for Iowa but for herself, along with the other congressmen.
THANK YOU FOR ALL THE HARD WORK YOU DO TO KEEP VOTERS INFORMED.
Lets have some adverse reciprocity
A very sober and yet still hopeful analysis. Thank you. I would ask the legal beagles to look to up the anti toward the shield law states. It would be dramatic, temporary presumably and force SCOTUS to issue a more comprehensive ruling protecting the full faith and credit clause.
The implications of what those pro-abortion “shield” states have done needs to be brought home to them. Reluctant legislators here might be educated about how the matter as an “abortion exception” will not be left alone as such as it is a precedent that undermines all manner of commercial and criminal judgements. Shield laws are the equivalent of safe-haven laws and are actually the antithesis of states’ rights because the basis allows others to reach into our state and subvert our prohibitions and legal judgements.
Are there regulations that those states hold dear within their confines that are not held here? If we have a company here that markets or produces something regulated in other states let the country know that any enforcement against them will not be recognized. Ship away as far as we are concerned and know that any action against them is unenforceable here.
Perhaps from now on enforcement (start small) of certain classes of civil or criminal judgement in another state are facilitated in any manner only by virtue of a treaty with respondent states (a rigamarole that the full faith and credit clause sought to avoid in order to inculcate the idea of a cohesive federal republic). Commercial and legal nightmare erupt and SOTUS is put on notice to respond with a comprehensive decision. States should start that ball rolling, at least introduce such legislation.
Consider a data base of judgements such that principals of those operations in violation of our laws and any enablers are forbidden from doing any (or classes of any business) in Iowa, having any of their claims even unrelated facilitated in Iowa and forbid them as foreign agents from owning property.
Our legislators ought to be made to understand the implications of this and do something about it. It is not a matter of enforcing our laws in New York. It is about not having New York proclivities visited on the people of our state. What is next from them. Sex change concoctions? Euthanasia drugs? Heroin?
What about the variety of things not for sale in California. Remove impediments: Guns, (don’t we believe Americans have a Second Amendment right to protect themselves) Safe haven for assets sent to Iowa to shield them from unjust New York laws we find unjust. Car computer chips. etc., California here we go.? Point is to be imaginative in order to make the point.