A San Antonio appeals-court judge has accepted $11,000 in campaign contributions from attorneys involved in cases pending before him over the past two years.

Jason Pulliam, who was appointed to the 4th Court of Appeals in January 2015 by former Gov. Rick Perry, accepted contributions from law firms handling three cases on which he was a member of court panels that decided the cases.

The most high-profile — and controversial — case concerned a class-action suit against Cash Biz, a payday lender often accused of predatory lending practices. Five Texas residents sued Cash Biz in 2015, alleging that the business used an “illegal and dishonest business model.”

At issue was Cash Biz’s practice of requiring customers to submit post-dated checks when they received a loan.

According to the suit, when customers failed to completely repay their loans, Cash Biz deposited the post-dated checks, which would inevitably bounce and subject the customer to criminal prosecution. Cash Biz responded to the lawsuit by trying to compel arbitration, arguing that borrowers had signed agreements waiving their right to sue the company.

District Judge Laura Salinas ruled that Cash Biz waived its right to arbitration with its post-dated check tactic. Pulliam, however, disagreed in the majority opinion he wrote for the 4th Court panel on July 27 of this year.

“Cash Biz’s actions,” Pulliam wrote, “though presumably vindictive, do not evince a desire to achieve repayment of any loans through the criminal process.”

On April 26, after oral arguments had been presented for the case, but three months before the verdict, the law firm representing Cash Biz (Coats Rose Yale Ryman & Lee, PC) made a $500 contribution to Pulliam’s election campaign.

Daniel Dutko, the Houston attorney representing Cash Biz’s customers, said Pulliam’s acceptance of the contribution is “shocking.” Dutko, who is hoping to appeal the case to the Texas Supreme Court, harshly criticized the logic of Pulliam’s opinion in the case.

“It’s a terribly written decision,” Dutko said. “Basically, (Pulliam) is saying, ‘They filed criminal charges against 1,400 people just to be mean, not to get their money back.’”

While Texas law does not prohibit contributions to judges from attorneys or parties involved in pending court cases, the issue is frequently cited as a major flaw with our state’s court system.

Texans for Public Justice, a nonpartisan watchdog group, came to this conclusion about the state’s appellate courts: “Regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans wield a judicial majority, the popular perception that justice is for sale in Texas will persist until Texas judges stop taking campaign from donors with cases in their courts.”

A similar issue contributed to the 2012 defeat of 4th Court Judge Phylis Speedlin. Campaign records revealed that Speedlin received contributions from local developers Eugene Dawson, Gene Powell, Wallace Rogers III and Lloyd Denton while they were involved in a case involving vested property rights.

Pulliam, 45, said the Cash Biz case bore no similarity to Speedlin’s situation, because she took money from parties in the case, while he received money from lawyers representing the parties. He added that he was unaware of the $500 donation — which appeared on his campaign finance form — until asked about it Tuesday for this column.

“The ultimate result is that I always follow the law, and I’ve never been overturned by a higher court,” said Pulliam, a former marine who served more than four years as a county court-at-law judge.

Pulliam, a Republican, faces a general-election challenge from Irene Rios, a Democrat with 14 years of experience on the county court-at-law bench.

Pulliam also accepted $2,500 from his former employers, the Ford Murray law firm, while part of the panel that reversed part of a district-court opinion and awarded Ford Murray’s client (DiAthegen, LLC) nearly $2 million. That same year, he accepted a total of $8,000 from lawyers representing both sides in a mineral-rights case (Brad Aery, Lloyd House, et al. vs. C. Clifton Hoskins, et al.).

Pulliam makes the valid point that these kinds of campaign contributions are hardly unique to him. But until this state reforms its judicial selection process, individual judges need to take it upon themselves to return any money that creates the appearance of a conflict of interest.

ggarcia@express-news.net

Twitter: @gilgamesh470