Andy Barr’s attack ad misleads with COVID-19 lawsuit claims, Democrat Josh Hicks says
Democratic congressional candidate Josh Hicks is calling for U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, to pull an attack ad because he says it leaves viewers with the false impression that he is attempting to profit from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In the middle of a pandemic that has caused the deaths of 200,000 Americans, I would have hoped that Andy would hold himself to a higher standard for truth and transparency in his campaign commercials,” Hicks said in a statement.
Barr’s television commercial, “A Quick Buck,” began airing last weekend. In it, Lexington anesthesiologist Dr. George Ginter says: “Trial lawyer Josh Hicks is looking to make a quick buck, suing hospitals who are treating COVID patients. Hicks even filed a lawsuit against the company developing a vaccine for COVID-19.”
“Congressman Andy Barr is helping us defeat the virus,” Ginter adds.
In tiny print at the bottom of the screen, the ad cites two lawsuits filed last year in U.S. District Court in Kentucky, long before the novel coronavirus pandemic struck. Hicks, a Lexington attorney with the firm of Hicks & Funfsinn, represented the plaintiffs in both suits.
In one case, a civil rights suit, a deaf woman in Louisville named Gina Curry sued Norton Healthcare for allegedly denying her access to a sign language interpreter in the operating room as she underwent a Cesarean section in 2018, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The hospital settled Curry’s suit in July on undisclosed terms.
In the other case, a product liability suit, a Manchester woman named Gilliana Mills sued pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson and subsidiary Codman & Shurtleff for crippling neurological problems allegedly resulting from a defective brain shunt and drainage tube surgically implanted in 2011. Codman issued a recall for its shunt in 2013, citing potential hazards, but Mills said she did not learn of the recall until 2018. Mills’ suit is still pending.
This year, Norton Healthcare is testing and treating people for the coronavirus, and Johnson & Johnson is one of the drug companies working on a vaccine. However, neither of the suits Hicks is involved with has anything to do with COVID-19.
“Andy has now taken the lies and distortion to the next level, and he’s crossed a line,” Hicks said.
“As an attorney, I fight for my clients, holding corporations accountable,” Hicks said. “Andy’s latest ad implies that I am working against COVID relief efforts. I have done no such thing, and the cases he cites started in 2019 and have nothing to do with COVID.”
The ad was still airing as of late Monday.
Barr campaign manager Brett Wakeman defended the ad in a prepared statement on Tuesday.
“Our well-researched, fact-checked and accurate ad upsets Josh Hicks because we informed voters that he makes his living suing doctors, hospitals and health care providers,” Wakeman said.
“Just look at his office doors, which he opened in the middle of the pandemic, where they say they take ‘slip and fall’ and ‘medical malpractice’ cases,” Wakeman said. ”Lawsuits tie down doctors, hospitals and health care providers, especially during a pandemic.”
Wakeman included with his statement pictures of the front doors of two branch locations that Hicks’ law firm has opened this year in Campton and Shelbyville.
Barr and Hicks are competing for the House seat representing Central Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District. The election is Nov. 3, although early absentee ballot voting already has begun.
This is at least Barr’s second campaign ad in recent weeks to feature questionable claims.
Earlier in September, Barr aired an ad on health insurance in which he said, “I will always protect people with preexisting conditions.”
Barr, though, has repeatedly voted to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law that — among other things — guarantees equal access to health insurance at approximately the same cost for people with preexisting conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Sometimes, Barr voted with House Republicans simply to repeal the Affordable Care Act without replacing it. Once, in 2017, they voted to replace it with their own measure, the American Health Care Act. But many sources, including the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the American Medical Association, said the House GOP plan would have weakened protections for people with preexisting conditions. It died in the Senate months later.
This story was originally published September 29, 2020 at 1:53 PM.
