A6 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2019 LATIMES.COM
THE NATION
SEATTLE — When Pres-
ident Trump announced his
original Muslim travel ban
on a Friday in early 2017,
Washington Atty. Gen. Bob
Ferguson spurred his depu-
ties on a weekend blitz so his
state could be the first to
challenge it.
“ ‘If at all humanly pos-
sible, we need to file the suit
on Monday,’ ” Ferguson re-
calls telling his team. “I
didn’t want there to be one
business day that went by
when the people of my state
would think I thought that
the travel ban was OK.”
Almost three years later,
Ferguson, a chess whiz and
obsessive scorekeeper, re-
mains one of the nation’s
most activist Democratic
state attorneys general, hav-
ing sued the administration
50 times to date. He picks his
fights, trailing his California
counterpart, Xavier Be-
cerra, who’s racked up 62
suits on issues such as immi-
gration, the environment,
gun control, consumer pro-
tection and civil rights.
Becerra, Ferguson and
attorneys general in a hand-
ful of other states, notably
Massachusetts and New
York, are leading the charge
in filing an unusual number
of cases against a president.
Jonathan Turley, a constitu-
tional law professor at
George Washington Uni-
versity, says the trend re-
sults partly from “shoddy”
legal work by the adminis-
tration — the travel ban took
multiple versions to pass
muster in court — but also
from political posturing by
state officials.
“There’s an exponential
explosion of attorneys gen-
eral lawsuits, and many of
those lawsuits have failed,”
Turley said. “For Demo-
cratic attorneys general,
lawsuits against Trump
have become a badge of le-
gitimacy.”
But when state Republi-
can lawmakers accuse Fer-
guson of grandstanding, he
defends his record, sending
them detailed allegations
of constitutional violations
and harm to Washington
citizens. By his reckoning,
he’s won 22 cases, 13 of which
are resolved beyond appeal,
and lost none.
The track record is “a
good indication that we’ve
been disciplined in bringing
the right cases,” he said.
Ferguson, 54, slim and
bookish with glasses and
graying brown hair, is a
calm, reasoned public
speaker. At 5 foot 11, he’s
three inches shorter than
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee,
who often stands with Fer-
guson at news conferences
announcing lawsuits, lob-
bing more incendiary pot-
shots at Trump. Ferguson
was considering a run for
governor until Inslee
dropped his presidential
campaign and declared his
candidacy for a third term.
Ferguson is athletic and
driven, always with an eye on
numbers. He aims to climb
to the highest point in each
state, with five to go, includ-
ing Alaska’s Denali, the tall-
est peak in North America.
He’s a dozen sandwiches
away from speaking at each
of Washington’s 182 Rotary
clubs.
The habit of setting
audacious goals began
young, after Ferguson grad-
uated from the University of
Washington and served in
the Jesuit Volunteer Corps,
helping low-income resi-
dents of Portland, Ore. He
spent six weeks on the road
in a balky Honda with a col-
lege buddy, Brian Bennett,
seeing a ballgame in every
Major League stadium.
Bennett, a Seattle lawyer,said Ferguson shows deter-
mination, whether summit-
ing Washington peaks or
working on his lifetime bird-
watching list. “Bob has a lev-
el of self-discipline which I’m
not sure I’ve ever seen in any-
one else,” he said.
Politics ran through Fer-
guson’s veins before he was
born. A photo on the wall of
his 21st-floor Seattle corner
office shows his father and
mother, pregnant with him
as her sixth child, posing
with a governor-elect at a
campaign celebration.
Ferguson’s dad, a Boeing
facilities planning manager,
knew nothing of rooks and
pawns, but began taking
him at age 9 to the company
chess club, where the young-
ster soon checkmated
adults. After high school,
Ferguson played chess
across the United States
and Europe for a year, even
playing a grandmaster to a
draw in a 10-hour game at the
Berlin Open, but ultimately
deciding not to go pro.
“It’s a solitary endeavor,
and you’re not exactly
changing someone’s life,” he
said of professional chess.
But he said the game taughthim how to take calculated
risks and not blame others.
“The biggest strength I
had,” he said, “was that I
hated to lose.”
Ferguson counts coups
during two terms as attor-
ney general, with verdicts in-
cluding an $18-million judg-
ment against the Grocery
Manufacturers Assn. for
concealing its identity as a
state campaign donor. He
won a judgment of more
than $9 million against Com-
cast for overcharging cus-
tomers. He has the first trial
in the nation against Purdue
Pharma coming up in Febru-
ary, having declined to enter
a tentative settlement in a
case accusing the company
of fueling the deadly opioid
epidemic.
With a staff of more than
1,000, Ferguson runs the na-
tion’s fifth-largest state at-
torney general’s office. He
has created a civil rights
team, beefed up an antitrust
unit and expanded a con-
sumer protection squad
that he plans to build into
the biggest in the country.
He said that suits against
the Trump administration
cost taxpayers a negligibleamount because they’re
funded by proceeds from civ-
il enforcement.
Ferguson applies three
tests when deciding whether
to sue the administration.
He asks whether Washing-
ton residents are being
harmed, whether his argu-
ments are good and whether
the state has legal standing.
“If the answers are ‘yes,’
‘yes’ and ‘yes,’ we file the law-
suit,” he said. “If there’s a ‘no’
in there, we don’t.”
Of the 50 he’s filed, 26
challenge Trump on the en-
vironment, including the
most recent case last week
accusing the administration
of undermining the Endan-
gered Species Act. Eleven
are immigration cases, such
as a suit challenging the con-
stitutionality of separating
families along the southern
U.S. border. Washington is
the lead plaintiff in 18 cases,
including that one.
Ferguson sees his chal-
lenge to Trump’s first travel
ban as the most significant,
one that he feels set a tone
and helped empower other
states. A judge granted a
nationwide temporary re-
straining order, which the9th Circuit appeals court up-
held, and the administra-
tion rescinded the ban.
Ferguson counts the case
as a win, saying that no court
has ruled against the merits
of his arguments in suits
against the administration.
“I’ll be surprised if I ever
have a successful outcome
that matches that,” Fergu-
son said.
But Turley pointed out
that ultimately the U.S.
Supreme Court upheld the
travel ban’s third version, ac-
cepting the administration’s
claim that it served a na-
tional security interest. By
the law professor’s count,
about half of Ferguson’s
suits have succeeded. He
said that many have dupli-
cated litigation brought by
organizations and individu-
als.
Turley granted, however,
that some of the suits filed
by Ferguson, Becerra and
other attorneys general are
legitimate, such as the one
asserting that states have
the right to set tougher auto
emissions standards than
federal requirements.
The president hasn’t sin-
gled out Ferguson in a tweet.
But when U.S. District
Judge James L. Robart
ruled in Washington state’s
favor on the original travel
ban, the president called the
jurist appointed by Republi-
can President George W.
Bush a “so-called judge.”
Among ongoing cases,
Ferguson considers most
significant his suit with
other states to halt Trump’s
decision ending the De-
ferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals, or DACA, program,
which protects certain
young immigrants from de-
portation. The state has
about 17,000 of these
“Dreamers,” and the attor-
ney general has heard from
many.
When Ferguson receives
handwritten letters from
constituents affected by his
Trump lawsuits, he pens
them replies. Children writ-
ing to him often get addi-
tional notes from his daugh-
ter, Katie, 11-year-old twin to
son Jack.
Katie also hand-draws
campaign buttons for her fa-
ther’s current bid for a third
term. The two sit together at
the dining room table in the
modest one-story Seattle
house where Ferguson and
his wife, Colleen, an interna-
tional education advisor, are
raising their family.
Ferguson said he loses no
sleep over potential retalia-
tion by Trump against his
state. “Why worry about it? I
don’t control it,” he said.Washington attorney general vs. Trump
ATTY. GEN. BOB FERGUSONof Washington state says playing chess taught him how to take calculated
risks and not blame others. He has sued the Trump administration 50 times to date — and has never lost.Karen DuceyFor The TimesState’s lawyer in chief chips away at administration’s immigration and environmental changes
By Richard Read
LAS VEGAS — Robert
Eglet settled behind micro-
phones Thursday morning
— his face reflected in the
shiny red wood of the confer-
ence table — and said what
might be expected after
earning thousands of shoot-
ing victims up to $800 million
in a lawsuit settlement.
He said nothing could
bring back the 58 who were
killed by the lone gunman
who perched himself in a
suite on the 32nd floor of the
Mandalay Bay Hotel and
Casino on Oct. 1, 2017, and
opened fire on thousands
across the Las Vegas Strip
attending the Route 91 coun-
try music festival.
He said the settlement —
which will be between $
million and $800 million —
saved at least a decade’s
worth of legal wrangling be-
tween the victims and MGM
Resorts International.
He said it was fair com-
pensation.
But after the news con-
ference was over, he said he
was frustrated that a certain
group would once again not
be held to account in a mass
shooting: gun manufactur-
ers.
“I think MGM, to a cer-
tain extent, is the victim, be-
cause if the gun manufactur-
ers didn’t have immunity,
that would have been the fo-
cus of the lawsuits prob-
ably,” Eglet said. “When it
comes to the responsibility
for this, the gun manufac-
turers skated because they
have immunity. MGM was
put in the position of having
to come up and resolve this.”
Eglet was referring to a
2005 federal law that prohib-
its gun makers and dealers
from being held liable when
their products are used in a
crime.
Over half of the 164 massshootings in the last 50 years
have occurred since 2000,
and a third in the last nine
years, according to the Jus-
tice Department, whose
tally includes every shooting
with at least four victims.
The last few years have
been the deadliest. El Paso,
Tree of Life, Dayton,
Odessa, Gilroy, Parkland —
the list goes on — have gen-
erated news cycles of grief,
weariness and despair and
made gun violence a top po-
litical issue.
Eglet, speaking near the
end of the hourlong news
conference at his office inLas Vegas, urged politicians
to take action.
“Are we really free when
children in our country are
afraid to go to school be-
cause they might be shot?”
he asked. “Are we really free
in this country where people
are afraid to go to the mov-
ies? Or the grocery store, for
fear there may be some mass
shooting there?”
“I don’t feel very free,” he
said.
The Las Vegas shooting
was the largest in modern
American history. Investiga-
tors have never been able to
explain what motivated thekiller, Richard Paddock, a
64-year-old gambler who fa-
vored high-stakes video
poker machines.
In the 34 years before
September 2016, Paddock
had purchased 29 firearms.
But in 11 months leading up
to his attack, he bought
more than 55 guns and over
100 accessories, including
scopes, cases and ammuni-
tion.
Paddock shot and killed
himself, and when police en-
tered his hotel room they
discovered about two dozen
firearms, including a dozen
fitted with “bump stocks,”
which are used to simulate
automatic firing and were
recently outlawed as a result
of the massacre.
Paddock fired more than
1,100 rounds from his room.
Investigators also found
more than 4,000 rounds of
unused ammunition for
AR-15s, AR-10s and other
guns, along with explosives.
Lawyers for victims and
their families said they
hoped the settlement with
MGM would spur corpora-
tions to push lawmakers to
change gun laws.
“Now companies like
MGM are stepping into this;
I think the government is go-
ing to listen to companies
like that,” said Kevin Boyle, a
Los Angeles-based lawyer
representing several hun-
dred victims.
That desire was not uni-
versal. Mo Aziz, whose
Houston-based firm repre-
sented more than 1,plaintiffs, said most of his cli-
ents weren’t interested in
holding gun makers ac-
countable.
“From my group of cli-
ents, many hunt and fish
and are gun owners — 2nd
Amendment folks — and it
wasn’t an avenue they
wanted to pursue,” he said.
“The gun debate is a very
complex issue.”
He said the settlement
did, however, “send a mes-
sage that corporations can
control their own premises
and make their properties
more secure.”
The settlement will be
paid out sometime next year
after a court-appointed ad-
ministrator determines how
much each plaintiff will re-
ceive, according to Eglet. He
declined to say how much
his firm would earn from the
settlement.
MGM may end up not
paying anything out of its
own pocket. Earlier this
year, in a financial disclosure
to shareholders, the com-
pany revealed it had insur-
ance that would pay out up
to $751 million.
The resolution Thursday
essentially ends all claims
against MGM under a statu-
te of limitations that expires
two years after the event.
Eglet said the parties
agreed to the settlement
Monday, but didn’t want to
make it public on the anni-
versary of the shooting and
upstage ceremonies being
held through the city and
Clark County.Vegas massacre suits settled for up to $800 million
Lawyers for victims of
2017 shooting regret
gun makers can’t also
be held to account.
By David Montero
TRIBUTESto the victims adorn a memorial garden wall in Las Vegas on Thurs-
day. MGM Resorts International will pay at least $735 million to settle lawsuits.John LocherAssociated Press