Personal Injury Lawyers Spend Millions Trying to Buy the West Virginia Judiciary

Personal injury lawyer interests spent over $2,000,000 to try and elect Judges and Justices during the 2024 election in West Virginia, according to research done by West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse. 

Candidates for Circuit Court took the majority of those dollars by accepting $1,449,000 directly from personal injury lawyers. Only $117,000 was contributed by personal injury lawyer interests to candidates for State Supreme Court and $90,000 for the Intermediate Appellate Court. Kanawha County candidates received far more than candidates from any other regional of the state-Circuit Court candidates accepted $608,000 directly from personal injury lawyers, while another $500,000+ was spent on an independent expenditure effort to elect their candidates for positions in the Kanawha County Courthouse.

"There is no doubt that the personal injury lawsuit industry is the biggest spending special interest group in the state. They spent big in their local county courthouses in 2024, and now they are trying to buy the State Senate,” said Greg Thomas, Executive Director for the West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse. “West Virginia’s judiciary is not for sale,” said Thomas. 

Personal injury lawyers are already giving big in State Senate elections, having given $28,000 to State Senator Laura Chapman at a fundraiser in Charleston in June. Senator Chapman is the first legislator to have a personal injury lawyer fundraiser in Charleston, and Senator Tom Willis had one on September 8th here in Charleston. Surely the first couple of many to come before the next election. We will provide an update after the next campaign finance reports are submitted in early October.

"Voters who want to see West Virginia get more jobs, better infrastructure, and improved access to affordable healthcare need to carefully observe who is funding their legislative candidates in the upcoming election. If liberal personal injury lawyers from Charleston are the main donors to your local "conservative" State Senator, then maybe they aren't quite as conservative as you think. The 2026 election is the time to tell the greedy personal injury lawyers that West Virginia is not for sale," said Greg Thomas.

Information for this report was obtained from publicly available campaign finance reports on the West Virginia Secretary of State’s website. Not all of the information for Independent Expenditures are included in this report, due to different campaign finance reporting requirements for non-legislative races.  Click Here for a link to the reports.