Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son is not only a chess mas­ter, but a marathon man of the legal pro­fes­sion, as can be  sev­en-year legal bat­tle that is like­ly to car­ry a price tag of $18 mil­lion for a pow­er­ful nation­al lob­by­ing apparatus.

The $18 mil­lion rep­re­sents a tre­ble dam­age award against the Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, in a mon­ey laun­der­ing law­suit brought by Fer­gu­son in clos­ing days of the 2013 cam­paign over Ini­tia­tive 522.

The award was unan­i­mous­ly affirmed ear­li­er this week by the Wash­ing­ton State Court of Appeals, in a deci­sion which held:

“Because of GMA’s inten­tion­al actions, Wash­ing­ton vot­ers were deprived of know­ing the mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies who were spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to defeat Ini­tia­tive 522 and the iden­ti­ty of those companies.”

Ini­tia­tive 522 was a bal­lot mea­sure that would have required that genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered foods and seeds be “clear­ly and con­spic­u­ous­ly” labeled as such.

The food and agribusi­ness indus­tries spent $22 mil­lion to defeat it, blan­ket­ing the air­waves with such spokes­men as Dan Newhouse.

If the Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion antic­i­pat­ed a slap on the wrist, or a cost-of-doing-busi­ness penal­ty, they vast­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed (or “mis­un­der­es­ti­mat­ed”, as George W. Bush would put it) the tenac­i­ty of Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ferguson.

The sto­ry must be told again, as an exam­ple of unre­strained cor­po­rate clout in an ini­tia­tive cam­paign, and a rare case where those who sow the wind reap the whirl­wind. “We intend­ed to send a strong mes­sage to all: If you want to engage in polit­i­cal cam­paigns in Wash­ing­ton, you have to play by the rules,” Fer­gu­son said at one point in the battle.

The rules – Washington’s pio­neer­ing Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Act.

The Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s law­suit pro­duced a com­pelling trail of doc­u­ments from with­in “Big Food,” the indus­try lob­by fight­ing the ini­tia­tive. Food man­u­fac­tur­ers and agribusi­ness spent more than $47 mil­lion in 2012 to nar­row­ly beat back a Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot propo­si­tion to require label­ing of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods.

Antic­i­pat­ing bat­tles to come, specif­i­cal­ly in Wash­ing­ton, the GMA set out to, in its words, “scope out a fund­ing mech­a­nism while bet­ter shield­ing indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies from attack for pro­vid­ing fund­ing” to defeat bal­lot initiatives.

A bevy of food giants – Pep­si­co, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods and Camp­bell Soups – had come under fire for their mas­sive spend­ing in the Cal­i­for­nia campaign.

The solu­tion was for the Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion to solic­it con­tri­bu­tions from big food com­pa­nies into a new­ly cre­at­ed “Defense of Brand” fund, so the Asso­ci­a­tion – not the com­pa­nies – could appear as the big donor in fil­ings with the state Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Commission.

Weeks before elec­tion day in 2013, Fer­gu­son struck with a lawsuit.

The com­pa­nies retreat­ed and released fig­ures on who gave how much to the No on 522 cam­paign. Just $600 out of a stag­ger­ing war chest of more than $20 mil­lion came from with­in the Ever­green State.

Five cor­po­ra­tions donat­ed $14 mil­lion-plus to defeat the mea­sure: Pep­si­Co donat­ed $2.5 mil­lion, with Nes­tle and Coca-Cola donat­ing $1.5 mil­lion each. Gen­er­al Mills donat­ed $500,000. Out of the agribusi­ness sec­tor, Mon­san­to spent $5.4 mil­lion, while DuPont put up $3.9 million.

The indus­try cam­paign, true to form, set up a front group.

A woman was put in place as tit­u­lar spokesper­son. The real work was done by a con­sult­ing firm that has run cor­po­rate cam­paigns against ini­tia­tives for near­ly forty years. Win­ner & Mand­abach (for­mer­ly Win­ner-Wag­n­er) is based in Bev­er­ley Hills, and cut its teeth fight­ing nuclear safe­guards ini­tia­tives. It blan­ket­ed the air­waves with tele­vi­sion spots fea­tur­ing Washingtonians.

As he is empow­ered to do under law, Fer­gu­son sought tre­ble dam­ages argu­ing that the GMA’s vio­la­tion of cam­paign laws was fla­grant and intentional.

Inter­nal doc­u­ments backed him up.

In Novem­ber of 2016, Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Anne Hirsch agreed GMA’s actions were inten­tion­al. She tripled GMA’s penal­ty to $18 million.

Almost two years lat­er, the Wash­ing­ton State Court of Appeals upheld the $6 mil­lion penal­ty, but not the tripling. Big Food would not get off that easy, though.

In a rul­ing last April, the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court rein­stat­ed the full $18 mil­lion judg­ment and penal­ty. The Supremes sent the case back to the Court of Appeals to hear the gro­cers’ legal challenge.

At one point, dur­ing the drawn-out legal bat­tle, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the GMA pri­vate­ly acknowl­edged pri­vate­ly that Big Food expect­ed a fine or judg­ment, but with­in the real of cost-of-doing-busi­ness. He voiced sur­prise, speak­ing for his clients, at Ferguson’s relent­less pur­suit of the case.

So, the appel­late court has now upheld the full award of dam­ages and penalties.

In words I wish applied to forty-nine oth­er states, Fer­gu­son declared: “Dark mon­ey has no place in Wash­ing­ton elec­tions. This deci­sion con­firms that our courts take inten­tion­al vio­la­tions of our cam­paign laws seriously.”

Tim Eyman, are you listening?

The Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion has changed its name to the Con­sumer Brands Asso­ci­a­tion after los­ing many of its biggest mem­bers.

It react­ed to this week’s rul­ing with what amount­ed to exhaus­tion, say­ing it is “eager to close the door on one of the last legal issues of the Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, and put this case behind us.”

But they’re not done fight­ing, and nei­ther is the Attor­ney Gen­er­al of Washington.