CONWAY — Attorneys for the family of a woman who died in one of Michael Morton’s nursing homes filed arguments and hundreds of pages of sworn testimony Wednesday in an attempt to keep a corruption lawsuit against Morton and lobbyist Gilbert Baker alive.

Among those giving depositions under oath to attorneys gathering information for the lawsuit were Morton; Baker; lobbyists Bruce Hawkins and Linda Leigh Flanagin; and Little Rock attorney Chris Stewart, who helped Baker form several political action committees that later contributed to former Judge Michael Maggio’s final judicial campaign.

The lawsuit, filed in Faulkner County Circuit Court, accuses Morton and Baker, a former state senator from Conway, of conspiring to funnel contributions to Maggio’s appeals-court campaign in exchange for Maggio’s agreeing to reduce a jury’s $5.2 million judgment to $1 million. That judgment came in a negligence lawsuit over the 2008 death of Martha Bull, 76, of Perryville at Morton’s Greenbrier nursing home.

“Gilbert Baker is the mastermind of this bribery scheme to place conservative jurists who favor tort reform on the appellate courts in this State,” attorneys Thomas Buchanan and Brannon Sloan argued in their response to a defense motion asking a judge to dismiss the corruption lawsuit. “Baker recruited Maggio to run for a seat on the Arkansas Court of Appeals and made sure that he had the financial resources necessary to do so.”

The term “tort reform” refers to efforts to place restrictions on lawsuits aimed at seeking monetary damages for physical and emotional injuries.

In 2014, the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered Maggio removed from office over unrelated issues, and he has since been sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison for bribery. He is appealing.

During Baker’s deposition, attorneys for Bull’s family showed Baker photographs of 16 checks that Morton had signed July 8, 2013, for Rhonda Wood’s successful campaign for the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2014.

The checks were among 36 inside a package Morton sent via FedEx to Baker’s home, where they arrived the next day. That would have been months before the November 2013 date that judicial campaigns could seek or accept contributions under Arkansas law. Campaign-finance records show that Morton and his companies gave $46,000 to Wood’s campaign.

Questioning Baker, Buchanan said, “Someone, it appears, has changed the date on all these [checks for Wood’s campaign].”

“Yes, sir,” Baker said.

“Do you know who that was?” Buchanan asked.

“I did,” Baker replied.

Baker said he realized the checks were written too early under the law, so he put them in an envelope, “did not tell the [Wood] campaign … that they were there” and held on to them until Wood’s campaign had a fundraiser in late November 2013. “And so I put the date to indicate the date that the checks went to the campaign,” Baker said.

Baker said he decided not to return the checks to Morton because of the “hassle factor.”

In an email late Wednesday, Wood said, “It appears from deposition testimony that Gilbert Baker received checks for my campaign early and decided to hang on to them instead of returning them. Had I known, I would have told him to return any checks received.”

Wood said she was “mostly dismayed that there has been a negative impact on the public’s trust in the judiciary as a result of many events that occurred in past judicial campaigns. I still believe that the public should continue to be trusted to elect their judges and justices.”

Baker said he got a text after the verdict from Maggio but did not recall its content. “But every call … and text I received, I don’t remember one that didn’t reference the amount of the damage, that they felt it was too high.”

At some point — he said he did not remember when — Wood also told him she was surprised by the size of the award.

Wood told the Arkansas Times earlier Wednesday that she does not remember “discussing the nursing-home verdict with him [Baker] and I cannot imagine doing so as I did not discuss cases with him.”

Morton testified in his deposition that the package also included $30,000 in checks for PACs he thought were intended to help finance Maggio’s campaign, two $25,000 checks for Arkansans for Lawsuit Reform, and a $100,000 check to the University of Central Arkansas Foundation. Baker was then a top executive at UCA and now teaches music.

Baker and Morton have denied wrongdoing and have not been charged with a crime.

Morton told attorneys that he learned of the jury’s $5.2 million judgment on May 16, 2013, by phone from the Greenbrier nursing home’s administrator at the time. He said he was in “shock and awe” at its size and called Baker that evening to point out that this judgment was the reason the state needed to overhaul lawsuit restrictions.

Hours earlier, before the jury’s 5:50 p.m. decision, Morton said he had discussed the need for lawsuit overhauls in a “back room” at Brave New Restaurant in Little Rock with, among others, Baker; Flanagin; state Sen. Eddie Joe Williams, R-Cabot; and David Norsworthy, a Morton business partner.

Morton said Baker and Flanagin left the meeting, but he and Norsworthy ran into them again at a table elsewhere in the restaurant. That’s when, Morton said, Baker and Flanagin asked him to support Maggio. They might also have asked him to support Wood, then an appeals-court judge, Morton said. Morton said Baker did not know about the trial at that meeting.

Morton said he and Baker had worked together in the past to form Arkansans for Lawsuit Reform. Baker and Morton met again in Russellville to discuss specific contributions, Morton testified. And a short time later — on June 18, 2013, according to the Bull family’s lawyers — Morton, Baker, Flanagin, Norsworthy, businessman Jim Cooper and John Goodson, a class-action lawyer married to Supreme Court Justice Courtney Goodson, gathered at a Little Rock steakhouse to discuss lawsuit overhaul again, Morton testified.

A Section on 06/30/2016