The email from state Rep. Doug Beck left John Ciuffa scratching his head.
“Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding legislation impacting our court system,” said the note from the office of Beck, D-Affton.
There was only one problem.
Ciuffa never sent an email to Beck.
“Why would I?” he told me on Thursday. Beck and Ciuffa grew up together, attending Lindbergh schools from elementary to high school. “I’ve known the man for more than 40 years. I talk to him all the time.”
The email that Ciuffa allegedly sent — it did come from his email address — is similar to dozens of others that state representatives in Missouri received in recent days, all urging them to change state law to make it more difficult for people who live out of state to join Missourians in class-action lawsuits against companies over failed products. Some of the letters cite this summer’s $4.7 billion verdict in a talc powder case against Johnson & Johnson filed by consumers who got cancer after years of using the company’s product.
People are also reading…
The letters appear to be copied verbatim from a petition posted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on a website called StandUnited.org, which pitches itself as a source of “grassroots” activism for conservative causes.
In this case, a more apt description would be fake roots.
Beck isn’t the only state representative to receive emails that either his constituents said they didn’t send or that came from people whose names don’t match the addresses listed on the letters.
When state Rep. Jay Barnes, a Republican lawyer from Jefferson City, started receiving the letters, he was surprised he didn’t recognize any of his constituents’ names, even though he has lived his entire life in Missouri’s capital city. So Barnes started driving around and looking at addresses and knocking on doors.
One letter came from an empty lot with a house under construction. Another came from an empty home. Others had different people living at the addresses listed than the names on the emails . And the few people he found whose names matched the addresses?
Like Ciuffa, they said they didn’t send the letters.
“These are fake emails driven by out-of-state defendants desperate to avoid responsibility for cancers and deaths that jurors in Missouri and elsewhere have found they caused — after weighing the actual evidence,” Barnes said. “I’m not surprised. There’s never going to be a groundswell of support for an out-of-state company that a jury found knowingly poisoned consumers, causing cancer and death. Desperate defendants do desperate things — including, apparently in this case, forging emails.”
The U.S. Chamber, in partnership with the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, has long targeted Missouri’s legal climate, trying to change state law to make it harder for consumers to be compensated when a jury finds a company liable for medical or other damages. Just last week, the president and CEO of the Missouri Chamber, Dan Mehan, wrote an op-ed in the Post-Dispatch signaling a plan to push more so-called tort reform measures in the next legislative session.
“We need Missourians to let their elected officials know that Missouri cares about this issue,” Mehan wrote. A spokesperson for Mehan said the Missouri Chamber had nothing to do with the emails.
The U.S. Chamber referred questions about the emails to StandUnited. A spokesman said: “StandUnited includes letter-to-lawmaker functionality that allows constituents to take action online.” Asked why so many lawmakers are receiving emails that didn’t come from real people, he directed me back to the U.S. Chamber.
Last week, Johnson & Johnson started a political action committee in Missouri, funding it with $10,000 from its federal political account.
State Rep. Peter Merideth, a Democrat whose district includes Tower Grove South, received about 14 of the emails, and he said he can’t connect any of them to real people who would confirm they sent the emails. Using a list provided by Merideth’s office, I went to several of the addresses to try to talk to his constituents.
The first email came from a vacant house on Parker Avenue that is under construction. A blue dumpster sits out front loaded with old screen doors and drywall. The living room is empty except for buckets of paint.
On Juniata Street, across from Mann Elementary School, another house listed as an address of a constituent who allegedly sent the letter is empty, too, though this one has already been remodeled and is for sale.
On Oak Hill Avenue, John Amtmann answers his door.
He’s astounded that a state lawmaker got an email from him.
“I would never send such an email,” he says. “I wouldn’t want companies not to be sued if their products failed. They should be held accountable.”
At least one lawmaker wants to apply that accountability to whoever sent the emails.
State Rep. Mark Ellebracht, D-Liberty, believes the emails likely broke state or federal law. He’s alerted the U.S. attorney’s office about them.
“Somebody has engaged in some level of identity theft here by posing as my constituents,” says Ellebracht, who is a lawyer. When he called one of the people who allegedly sent him a letter, the constituent said, “‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’” Ellebracht said.
“This undermines the entire democratic process. They’re using other people’s email without their permission or knowledge and co-opting their opinion. It’s insidious.”