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G Articles on Vexatious litigationThe articles below will be added to from time to time. Many articles are from the US where there is a growing unease about the increasing unfettered role of big business and the legal profession in general. In the US there is an increasing clamour for ‘tort reform’ (delict in Scotland) where it has been argued that vexatious and frivolous practices run up huge bills.Extract from Hansard (Commons) 2000-05-25 Vexatious Litigants INMATE'S LAWSUIT REACHES STATE'S TOP COURT Court puts clamps on bogus lawsuits Killer deemed a vexatious litigant VEXATIOUS SUIT, LITIGATION Vexation law – Contradiction of US principles Q: When is a frivolous lawsuit not frivolous? A: When it's filed by a corporation The myth of frivolous lawsuits A US Myth: "Frivolous" lawsuits Another Myth: "Tort tax" The Fake Crisis over Lawsuits: Who’s Paying to Keep myths Alive? The Myth of the Frivolous Lawsuit 30. Mr. David Drew (Stroud): How many applications with regard to vexatious litigants the Law Officers have dealt with over the past 12 months. [122432] The Solicitor-General (Mr. Ross Cranston): In the past 12 months the High Court has considered 11 applications made by the Law Officers under section 42 of the Supreme Court Act 1981. Of those 11 applications, nine resulted in orders being made, one application was refused and one, although heard, awaits judgment. In the same period, the employment appeals tribunal made two orders under section 33 of the Industrial Tribunals Act 1996, which prevents applications to the tribunal. Mr. Drew: I thank my hon. and learned Friend for that reply. Obviously, it is not without interest for the House, given this week's proceedings. 25 May 2000 : Column 1106 What are the implications for the individuals concerned? Clearly, if an order is served on someone, that can lead to considerable restriction of his or her activities. Is that compatible with the European convention on human rights? The Solicitor-General: The Attorney-General and I give these applications close consideration when they come before us. One of my constituents is a vexatious litigant, and he constantly reminds me, in the nicest possible way, of the implications that the order has for him. We carefully consider such applications, which must then be considered by two High Court judges sitting in the divisional court. On the human rights aspect, Strasbourg has considered the matter on two occasions and said that the orders are compatible with the ECHR. The test is very high. The statute requires habitual and persistent behaviour, and it must be reasonable in the circumstances for the court to make that order. As the figures that I gave my hon. Friend indicate, the number of applications is not significant. An order does not prevent vexatious litigants from litigating, but they have to seek the leave of the court to bring an action. INMATE'S
LAWSUIT REACHES STATE'S TOP COURT
Wednesday, November 15, 2000 NEWS 01C By Alan Johnson Dispatch Statehouse Reporter Lonny Lee Bristow was silent, but his painful words echoed yesterday as the Ohio Supreme Court heard an appeal from the poster child for Ohio's "vexatious litigator'' law. In Bristow's hands, attorney Mark Landes said, lawsuits have been "used, abused and thrust into the hearts and souls of over a hundred victims.'' Landes' Columbus law firm has been fighting a legal war against Bristow since 1993 on behalf of officials in Bristow's home county of Richland. Outside the Supreme Court chambers, some of Bristow's victims huddled to discuss the case. Darlene Windsor -- Bristow's aunt and target of lawsuits filed in 55 Ohio counties and the Nevada Supreme Court -- bemoaned the pain her nephew has caused. "He can do so much damage with a pen and a piece of paper, a telephone and a computer,'' she said. Bristow, 27, a Mansfield man incarcerated at the Ohio State Penitentiary at Youngstown, has filed at least 137 lawsuits in Ohio and other states. The state's most prolific jailhouse lawyer, Bristow became the focus of Ohio's 1997 law aimed at curbing costly and abusive suits. His lawsuits have cost Ohio taxpayers an estimated $100,000. After his mail and court privileges were restricted, Bristow, not surprisingly, went to court. His appeal ended up in the Supreme Court after the 3rd District Court of Appeals in Crawford County struck down the vexatious-litigator law. Bristow did not appear in court yesterday, although he could have because he acts as his own attorney. Instead, he filed a neat, hand-printed brief claiming that the restrictions on his mail and lawsuit-writing privileges violate his constitutional rights to freedom of speech, privacy, due process and access to the courts. The oral arguments yesterday and Bristow's brief will be considered by the court in rendering a decision, probably early next year. Justices Deborah Cook and Evelyn Lundberg Stratton excused themselves from hearing Bristow's case because both were on a committee that drafted the vexatious-litigator law. They were replaced by two appeals court judges. Judith French, a lawyer representing Attorney General Betty D. Montgomery, told justices that the restrictions do not amount to "locking the door to the courtroom.'' Bristow could still file non frivolous lawsuits, with court permission, or hire a lawyer to do it, or seek relief in the federal courts, she said. Bristow was sentenced in June 1998 to nine years, 11 months in prison by Crawford County Judge Nelfred G. Kimerline for his conviction on 14 counts of telephone harassment of his aunt and Richland County public officials, including the sheriff and judges. Earlier this year, Judge Walter C. Lytten of Scioto County Common Pleas Court tacked on three years and three months to Bristow's sentence after he masterminded the most elaborate phone scam uncovered in an Ohio prison, stealing a Dublin man's identity and racking up thousands of dollars in credit-card and phone bills. In September, after he was moved to the "supermax'' prison at Youngstown -- where inmates are locked down 23 hours a day -- Bristow somehow managed to file suits in three different counties. Bristow's lawsuits often are filled with profanity, violent threats and obscene sexual accusations. They usually are aimed at judges, law-enforcement personnel and public officials. Although frivolous, the suits clog the court system because lawyers must respond on behalf of named public officials and law-enforcement employees. Court puts clamps on
bogus lawsuits
Saturday, December 30, 2000: By Catherine Candisky Dispatch Statehouse Reporter Lonny Lee Bristow will need a new prison hobby. In a 5-2 decision yesterday, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Ohio's vexatious-litigator law, effectively putting Bristow's lawsuit-filing days behind him. The 1997 statute aims to restrict illegitimate, costly and often harassing lawsuits. Persistent filers deemed to be vexatious litigators still can initiate non frivolous lawsuits with court permission. Bristow, a Mansfield man serving 13 years in the Ohio State Penitentiary at Youngstown, had filed about 135 lawsuits when the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Nov. 14. Since then, he has filed 17 more. He has sued family and acquaintances, law-enforcement officers and their families and a Dispatch reporter. In a 27-page ruling, Justice Alice Robie Resnick wrote that "Bristow attempts to make a mockery of the judicial system . . . . "Although he knows he will never win a judgment, he gets revenge each time the defendants pay their attorney fees and court costs. For the cost of a stamp, Bristow has found a way to inflict his revenge on the defendants and the general taxpaying public. The only effective and fair way to curb his abuse is to take away the procedural privilege he has twisted into a weapon.'' The court, however, found that the Crawford County Common Pleas Court overstepped its authority by ordering that Bristow's outgoing mail be routed through a judge for review. The order was requested by Richland County Prosecutor James J. Mayer Jr. to ensure the ban wasn't being violated. "While we sympathize with Mayer and the trial court under these exceedingly difficult circumstances, we find no authority to support this order, as it exceeds the scope of the court's inherent powers,'' Resnick wrote. Under Ohio's law, the Supreme Court notifies local courts of the names of anyone dubbed a vexatious litigator, leaving it to court officials to weed out any invalid lawsuits. After his mail and court privileges were restricted, Bristow filed the lawsuit that led to yesterday's ruling. The 3rd District Court of Appeals in Crawford County had deemed the law unconstitutional. Supreme Court review was prompted by two other appellate courts upholding the statute. Columbus attorney Mark Landes, who has fought Bristow on behalf of Richland County officials, said Bristow has harassed more than 100 people with groundless lawsuits. In a suit filed against the daughter of a detective, Bristow alleged in lurid detail that the girl had been sexually molested by her father. Bristow, 27, was sentenced in 1998 to nine years for telephone harassment of his aunt. Earlier this year he received an additional three years for a behind-bars scam to steal a Dublin man's identity and rack up thousands of dollars in credit-card and phone bills. He has filed the suits acting as his own attorney, and many are filled with obscenities, threats and wild accusations. Although the suits are frivolous, defendants still must respond. Officials estimate the suits also have cost taxpayers about $100,000 in court and legal expenses. While pleased with the court's decision to uphold the law's constitutionality, Landes said enforcement will be tough without the ability to review Bristow's outgoing mail. After being banned from filing in Ohio courts, Landes noted, Bristow began filing lawsuits in out-of-state courts including Arizona and California. "The (lower) court was just trying to plug a leak that had let him continue filing lawsuits,'' Landes said. "The ruling creates a practical problem for a very persistent guy.'' Justice Paul E. Pfeifer and Judge Peter B. Abele of the 4th District Court of Appeals, who sat on the case for recused Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, dissented. "I am concerned that a valid complaint may not receive the attention it deserves simply because it was filed by a vexatious litigator,'' Pfeifer wrote in a two-paragraph dissent. "Our courts are open to all who have been injured whether or not they have frivolously cried 'Wolf' too many times in the past.'' Hoddle Street mass murderer Julian Knight has been banned from launching legal battles over his prison grievances for the next 10 years. Knight will be required to seek Supreme Court permission before bringing legal proceedings after Justice Tim Smith yesterday granted an application by Attorney-General Rob Hulls to have him declared a vexatious litigant. Knight, 35, has instigated legal proceedings 16 times in the past three years over his treatment in the prison system; the court found that 13 were vexatious. Justice Smith said in the Supreme Court yesterday that Knight, 35, "habitually" pursued hopeless proceedings. "He is obviously an intelligent man but refuses to accept the obvious soundness of the decisions given against him and has demonstrated a habit of pursuing vexatious claims and doing so persistently," he said in his judgement. Knight is serving a 27-year jail term after killing seven people and wounding 19 in a shooting rampage in 1987. His legal challenges have cost the Justice Department more than $250,000. In the most recent claims, heard in the Supreme Court last October, Knight alleged that Barwon Prison officers opened his legal mail, which is privileged. He also claimed he was unfairly disciplined when nails concealed in pens and knives secreted in a magazine were found in his cell. Justice Philip Cummins dismissed the claims, describing the complaints as unjustified and at best nitpicking. As a vexatious litigant, Knight will have to demonstrate the possible merit of any case before authorities respond to it. Mr Hulls yesterday welcomed the decision. "No person . . . should be able to abuse the court system, cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and take up court time by continually bringing vexatious, frivolous and unmeritorious claims," he said. "It's only in pretty extraordinary circumstances that an attorney-general would make an application to have someone declared a vexatious litigant," he said. "I believe that the matter of Julian Knight was quite extraordinary." In the past 10 years, five Victorians have been declared vexatious litigants by the Supreme Court. A vexatious suit is one which has been instituted maliciously, and without probable cause, whereby a damage has ensued to the defendant. The suit is either a criminal prosecution, a conviction before a magistrate, or a civil action. The suit need not be altogether without foundation; if the part which is groundless has subjected the party to an inconvenience, to which he would not have been exposed had the valid cause of complaint alone have been insisted on, it is injurious. To make it vexatious, the suit must have been instituted maliciously. As malice is not in any case of injurious conduct necessarily to be inferred from the total absence of probable cause for exciting it, and in the present instance the law will not allow it to be inferred from that circumstance, for fear of being mistaken, it casts upon the suffering party the onus of proving express malice. It is necessary that the prosecution should have been carried on without probable cause. The law presumes that probable cause existed until the party aggrieved can show to the contrary. Hence he is bound to show the total absence of probable cause. He is also under the same obligation when the original proceeding was a civil action. The damage which the party injured sustains from a vexatious suit for a crime, is either to his person, his reputation, his estate or his relative rights. 1. whenever imprisonment is occasioned by a malicious unfounded criminal prosecution, the injury is complete, although the detention may have been momentary, and the party released on bail. 2. When the bill of indictment contains scandalous aspersions likely to impair the reputation of the accused, the damage is complete. 3. Notwithstanding his person is left at liberty, and his character is unstained by the proceedings, (as where the indictment is for a trespass) yet if he necessarily incurs expense in defending himself against the charge, he has a right to have his losses made good. 4. If a master loses the services and assistance of his domestics, in consequence of a vexatious suit, he may claim a compensation. With regard to a damage resulting from a civil action, when prosecuted in a court of competent jurisdiction, the only detriment the party can sustain, is the imprisonment of his person, or the seizure of his property, for as to any expense, he may be put to, this, in contemplation of law, has been fully compensated to him by the costs adjudged. But where the original suit was coram non judice, the party as the law formerly stood, necessarily incurred expense without the power of remuneration, unless by this action, because any award of costs the court might make would have been a nullity. However, by a late decision such an adjudication was holden unimpeachable, land that the party might well have an action of debt to recover the amount. So that the law, in this respect, seems to have taken a new turn, and, perhaps, it would now be decided, that no action can under any other circumstances but imprisonment of the person or seizure of the property, be maintained for suing in an improper court. The tort “reform” movement contradicts conservative principles of the party of Lincoln, like promoting personal responsibility, limited government spending, and family values. Everyone should be responsible for their own wrongdoing—corporations as much as individuals. When a company’s products harm someone, or when workplace conditions make employees chronically ill, that company should compensate the injured person for the harm it’s caused.Civil lawsuits protect children and families. Economic loss and illness can tear families apart. Compensating them for their injuries helps them stay together. And the jury system does this by making wrongdoers—not taxpayers, through government-funded benefits programs—foot the bill for these costs. The civil justice system is a free-market mechanism: Individuals bring lawsuits without government interference. And jury verdicts allow ordinary Americans to hold more powerful wrongdoers accountable, and prevent them from causing future harm. One complaint about plaintiff's lawyers is that they file frivolous lawsuits against big corporations to try and make a few bucks by settling. Many people believe that this purported behaviour is so bad that we need to reform the legal system. So why is it OK when corporations behave the same way? Monster Cable has been filing shakedown suits against anyone who uses the word Monster in their business, such as: Monster.com; Monster Garage; Disney, because of Monsters, Inc.; Monster Cable is even trying to squash small businesses that dare to use the word "Monster." The suits are supposedly brought because Monster Cable is afraid that consumers will think that Monster Cable is associated with anyone else who uses the word Monster in its business. I'm pretty sure that no one said, "Hey, Monster Cable just hired Pixar to make an awesome movie about Monsters. Let's go see it NOW!" Maybe Monster Cable will sue me for telling the truth about their product: It's not worth the price premium over regular brands of cable. Here's an excerpt from a great article at Forbes about Monster Cable: TO ENCOURAGE audio salesmen to push its costly stereo cables, 12 times a year Monster Cable flies a dozen or so top producers from stores around the country to all-expenses-paid weekends at places like the Napa Valley, Hawaii and Germany. Founder, chairman and sole owner Noel Lee even lets the star salespeople zoom around in his 13 sports cars, including a $200,000 Ferrari. Lee needs good salespeople because his product requires lots and lots of selling. Buy a $400 stereo from the Good Guys in California and chances are you'll also walk out with $50 worth of Monster cables. Buy a $1,000 Marantz amplifier from Ken Crane's Home Entertainment in California and you'll get sold on a $100 connecting cable. This reveals one of the great hypocrisies about tort reform: Business wants limits, caps, and restrictions on personal injury cases, where they're usually the defendants, but they want no limits, caps, or restrictions on financial injury cases, where they're often the plaintiffs. My latest thought on the Monster Cable Lawsuits is here. Or go here and find out why what Monster Cable is doing would make a great episode of The Sopranos. The myth of frivolous lawsuits Tort reformers can pick another cause; Hawaii doesn't have a problem with rampant litigation By Richard Turbin Special to the Star-Bulletin One of the great myths in Hawaii's political culture is that legislation is needed to limit lawsuits. Big business and insurance interests are lobbying fast and furious for such litigation, using slogans like, "In order to make Hawaii business competitive, we must eliminate frivolous lawsuits!" We hear rumours that "we are in the midst of a 'litigation explosion' with 'runaway juries.'" We are told of a "crisis" in the availability and affordability of medicine because of glitches in the medical liability system. Punitive damage awards are said to be "skyrocketing!" Current facts, however, reflect a far different scenario. Recent statistics reveal that a frivolous lawsuit problem simply does not exist in Hawaii or in any state. The most comprehensive analysis on the subject, completed by one of the most respected "think-tanks" in America, the RAND Institute for Civil Justice, surfaced in the early '90s. The evidence in the RAND report, bolstered by subsequent reports on the subject, demonstrates that only 10 percent of people who are injured ever use the tort system to seek compensation for their injuries. According to the studies, between 1960 and 1990, average and median jury verdicts barely kept pace with inflation. In 1993, 61 percent of all new cases filed in state courts involved traffic and ordinance violations; only 27 percent were civil cases, of which only 9 percent involved torts. Of those cases, only 3.85 percent "clogged the courts" by requiring a jury verdict. While big business and insurance interests would have you believe that frivolous lawsuits plague our courts, the truth is that, since 1991, tort cases reflect only 6 percent of cases filed. Further, the number of tort cases filed in Hawaii falls far below the national average. If there is a problem with a litigation explosion, the cause of it more accurately lies with America's big business interests, rather than with the ordinary citizen. For example, Texas businessmen sue Oprah Winfrey for millions of dollars because she criticizes their beef industry. This is not an isolated incident. Between 1985 and 1991, business disagreements made up nearly half of all federal litigation, with suits over contract disputes outpacing any other single category. Lawsuits between big businesses over contracts more than tripled in federal courts between 1960 and 1988, while suits filed against them by ordinary citizens declined 21 percent. Since 1986, lawsuits by average citizens against small business operations and individuals have declined 12 percent. Ironically, despite their efforts to encourage legislation that would curtail lawsuit filings, big business interests are adamant that such restrictions should not apply to them. They argue that any constraint over their right to file lawsuits against debtors and other businesses would be unfair, as it would interfere with their right to earn a profit. Big business and insurance want a double standard. They want the right to use our court system for themselves, but not for you and me. American businesses are now the most competitive in the world. Yet big business owners claim that escalating product liability lawsuits in this country threaten their industrial might. Again, the facts clearly do not support this allegation. For example, federal courts products liability cases against Fortune 1000 companies have dropped from a high of 3,500 in 1985 to 1,500 in 1991. Moreover, in 1991, product liability insurance premiums amounted to less than 1 percent of product retail sales, and between 1987 and 1993 product liability premiums fell 45 percent. Over the last decade, the average payout per product liability claim by insurance companies has been less than $6,000. Large companies, while complaining about the threats of frivolous lawsuits, are, in fact, realizing a downward trend in corporate liability risk. The Wall Street Journal reported that, in 1993, the total corporate liability risk for all lawsuits, including product liability, shareholder and employee discrimination lawsuits, totaled only $3.29 per $1,000 of revenue. Total corporate risk was down nearly 7 percent for the previous year, with larger companies enjoying the largest savings. There is also heated debate surrounding the rising costs of the medical liability system in this country. Erroneously, malpractice claims are often blamed for the skyrocketing costs of health care. To the contrary, available evidence indicates that changing the current medical liability system would have very little effect on total health-care spending. Only about 2 percent of those injured by a physician's negligence ever seek compensation through a lawsuit. In fact, medical malpractice claims have been declining since 1985 at an average annual rate of 8.9 percent. Of the cases filed, doctors have been winning in court 70.7 percent of the time. The bottom line is that medical malpractice premiums amount to less than 1 percent of national health-care costs. This is not to say that frivolous lawsuits are never filed. Certainly, for a minimal fee, any citizen can go down to the state courts and file his or her lawsuit. After all, it is a free country. The question is, what happens once a lawsuit is filed? Under Rule 11 of the Hawaii and Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the lawyer and/or plaintiff who file a lawsuit can be fined substantial monetary penalties if the judge finds that the filing was frivolous. As a result, the plaintiff (and in certain cases the plaintiff's attorney) can be sued for malicious prosecution. Even when the lawsuit has merit, the litigation costs of the prevailing party are the responsibility of the losing party. The losing party rarely pays less than $10,000 to the winner. According to statistics, the ordinary citizen usually loses the cases against a business; hence, the poorer party ends up paying the litigation costs of the wealthier party! As the facts reveal, the public is being misled by claims that there is a frivolous lawsuit problem escalating in America. Clearly, the driving force behind the fallacy are powerful insurance and business interests that finance lobbying efforts for legislation to limit consumer lawsuits. Fortunately, our civil justice system offers a way for ordinary people to hold Hawaii's power elite accountable. Our civil justice system is a system of restraint on those, who by virtue of economic power, do not want to be restrained. America's legal system is a linchpin of democracy. If we restrict citizen's access to the courts, we are crippling the democratic order. This country's judiciary system is one of the best in the world. Still, there is clearly room for improvement. Litigation costs must be reduced, and the explosion of expensive expert witnesses should be contained. In an attempt to curtail the soaring costs of litigation in our courts today, various means of settling cases are being tested. Arbitration, a positive innovation pioneered by Hawaii's Supreme Court, is effective and a true cost-saving factor for Hawaii's citizens. In use more and more across the country, arbitration is now mandatory for most cases filed in state courts. In fact, most tort cases in Hawaii now are being settled through arbitration. Mediation, another alternative, is working to resolve still more cases across the land. Also, some federal courts are experimenting with limiting expert witnesses through a system of court-appointed experts, which results in reduced litigation costs. Every trial lawyer and judge knows that more needs to be done to reduce the cost of litigation. But the worst thing we can possibly do is to enact more legislation that prevents the average citizen hiring a lawyer and using the courts. Our tax dollar finances our court system. It would be unfair if only Hawaii's wealthiest could afford access to it. Richard
Turbin is a Honolulu attorney and chairman-elect of the
Tort and Insurance Section of the American Bar Association, with 35,000
members the largest organization of insurance
and personal injury lawyers in the world. Tort “reformers” claim that too many lawsuits lead to increased costs and delays in the civil justice system. President Bush twice denounced “frivolous lawsuits” in his State of the Union address in January. But researchers have been unable to confirm the existence of a “litigation explosion.” Tort filings in state courts have declined by 9 percent since 1992, according to the National Center for State Courts (NCSC). The cases that are on the rise are contract cases—generally businesses suing businesses. According to the Court Statistics Project, contract filings have increased by 21 percent since 1995. Civil litigation is decreasing in the federal courts as well. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts found federal civil filings dropped from 280,000 in 1998 to 265,000 in 2003, and the percentage of personal injury cases in that time fell from 21.2 percent to 18.3 percent of all civil cases filed. Less than 20 percent of all federal civil cases are tort cases, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The truth is, only 2 percent of Americans file lawsuits, according to the Rand Institute for Civil Justice. In state courts, only 5 percent of the tort cases filed go to trial; in federal court, only 3.1 percent do, according to the BJS. It is defendants who raise costs and drag out suits by stalling discovery: Courts around the country have sanctioned corporate defendants for withholding or destroying evidence, routinely filing numerous objections, failing to produce documents and witnesses, and hiding records or denying that they were ever kept. The McDonald’s coffee case and others that have drawn media attention have distorted the public perception of the legal system, giving people the impression that huge sums are commonly awarded for questionable wrongs. In fact, the media report only large verdicts or unusual cases that they deem newsworthy. And the woman who spilled the McDonald’s coffee? She was 79, in the passenger seat of a stopped car, and the coffee scalded her so badly that she suffered third-degree burns and needed skin grafts. During discovery, McDonald’s produced documents showing more than 700 claims from people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. The judge reduced the jury award of $2.9 million in compensatory and punitive damages, and the woman settled for about $600,000. An injured person received a fair award. That’s the story that needs to be told. Plaintiff lawsuits hurt the U.S. economy by creating a so-called tort tax on products and services. That term, like tort “reform,” is only a clever marketing slogan. Behind it is a concerted effort to let corporations off the hook and take away the right to a jury trial. The excuse: that juries—that is, ordinary citizens—too lightly give away too much money. The fact is, the only people paying a “tort tax” are taxpayers, who have to pick up the tab when a company’s misconduct leaves someone brain-damaged, paralyzed, chronically ill, or dead. Eliminating juries and capping damages just shifts the costs to overburdened government programs that provide health and disability benefits. The people crying “tort tax” say businesses are crippled by litigation costs. But the real picture tells a different story. A 1999 survey by Ernst & Young and the Risk and Insurance Management Society found that liability costs have actually declined. The study found that companies paid only $5.20 in liability costs for every $1,000 in revenue and that these costs—which include property damage, workers’ compensation, and lawsuit expenses—were down 37 percent from 1992 levels. Over the past two years, the average media consumer would be under the impression that the nation is awash with lawsuits, greedy trial lawyers and out of control juries eager to punish corporate America with million-dollar verdicts. The airwaves and newspapers have been flooded with hundreds of stories on the legal system, with common references to the justice system as a lottery for the undeserving and most lawsuits as "frivolous." And many of the stories carry glaring factual errors. A few examples: In November 2002, viewers of "60 Minutes" learned that Mississippi was the nation's capital of "jackpot justice," where "plaintiffs' lawyers have found that juries in rural, impoverished places can be mighty sympathetic when one of their own goes up against a big, rich, multinational corporation." In the story, Morley Safer interviewed a local florist who had received a multi-million dollar settlement in a lawsuit over the diet drug Redux. The unnamed florist alleged that trial lawyers were bribing jurors to give big awards. "The jury awarded these people this money because they felt as if they were going to get a cut off of it," he told Safer. At the time of the episode, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was spending $100,000 on an advertising campaign in Mississippi to push for a cap on damages in lawsuits against corporations. That fact wasn't included in the story even as it quoted the chamber's recent "warning" to businesses to avoid Mississippi because of its legal climate. Several Mississippi jurors sued CBS for libel over the broadcast. Meanwhile, the florist, Beau Strittman, retracted his comments about the payoffs, saying, "I just said it as a joking statement." In June 2003, publishing mogul Morton Zuckerman wrote a column in U.S. News and World Report that bemoaned the state of litigious America. He wrote, "A woman throws a soft drink at her boyfriend at a restaurant, then slips on the floor she wet and breaks her tailbone. She sues. Bingo – a jury says the restaurant owes her $100,000. A woman tries to sneak through a restroom window at a nightclub to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She falls, knocks out two front teeth, and sues. A jury awards her $12,000 for dental expenses." Zuckerman had to issue a correction because both lawsuits were whole-cloth fabrications that had been circulating in other media outlets for more than a year. That same month, based on data provided by the American Medical Association, Time magazine's cover declared that lawsuits were forcing thousands of doctors to leave the profession. "To doctors…the main problems are frivolous lawsuits and multimillion-dollar judgments awarded for tragic but sometimes unavoidable outcomes." In August 2003, a General Accounting Office study found many of the media reports and the AMA's claims about doctors quitting the profession because of the "malpractice crisis" were false. For instance, in Nevada, one of the AMA's "crisis" states, the GAO found that of the 34 ob/gyns reported to be closing shop due to malpractice concerns, eight were still practicing and three stopped practicing due to reasons other than malpractice. Researchers concluded there was no evidence that doctors nationally were abandoning their practices at all much less for reasons related to malpractice suits, which had actually declined over the past few years. A December Newsweek cover story warned: "Lawsuit Hell: Doctors. Teachers. Coaches. Ministers. They all share a common fear: being sued on the job." The article claimed that the country is suffering from an "onslaught of litigation" that costs Americans $200 billion a year. The article failed to mention, among other things, that in 1997, Congress passed the Volunteer Protection Act, immunizing volunteers such as Little League coaches from lawsuits for negligence, making the featured coach's fears largely unfounded. The $200 billion figure cited as the cost of the legal system comes from a discredited insurance industry "study" that defines the legal system as everything from medical bills and lost wages of people forced to miss work because of injuries to insurance industry salaries, overhead and investments. Newsweek also failed to disclose that its parent company had a financial interest in seeing lawsuits restricted. Post-Newsweek Stations Inc. has been sued a number of times for employment discrimination and had been hit with an $8.3 million verdict in 1999. The primary source for the "Lawsuit Hell" story, Phillip Howard, works for the law firm of Covington & Burling, which represents Newsweek in those suits. Academic researchers have done a tremendous amount of empirical study that contradicts many of the claims of a "lawsuit crisis," but none of it made it into the stories cited above. For instance, despite the alarmist headlines, tort lawsuit filings nationally actually have decreased 9 percent since 1992, according to the National Center for State Courts. The numbers are even more pronounced when stacked up against population growth. In Texas, where the population jumped 23 percent between 1990 and 2000, the rate of tort filings fell from 233 to 164 per 100,000 residents, a 30 percent decline. In California, the rate of filings plummeted 45 percent. As for the "legal lottery" described in Newsweek, a Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that in 1996, the "jackpot" really isn't very large. The median punitive damage award was only $27,000. Steve Brill first wrote about litigation myths back in 1986, when he traced several examples of the allegedly "frivolous lawsuits" for the American Lawyer magazine and found that many of them were simply urban legends. He says, "I had gone back through the archives of magazine, and every ten years, Time declared a "litigation crisis. But there was no crisis." Reporters' perpetuation of the litigation myths has become one of Brill's pet peeves, even though, as a business owner himself, he supports legal changes that would protect businesses. "Reporters are basically lazy," says Brill. "You can always find a ridiculous lawsuit to make the system look crazy." The skewed coverage of the legal system represents a victory in a sustained, 25-year public relations assault on the civil justice system by a highly organized movement funded by the insurance industry, tobacco companies and other corporate giants seeking to limit their liability for wrongdoing. The insurance industry launched the first concerted PR campaign in the early 1980s, with a series of ads in Newsweek and Time magazine designed to promote the idea of the lawsuit crisis. Under the heading "We all pay the price," the ads claimed that lawsuits were driving ob/gyns out of business, shuttering local school sports programs, and scaring the clergy out of counseling their flocks. Then, as now, many of the lawsuit horror stories that turned up in the major media proved to be fabrications. Since then, the rhetoric has only gotten more sophisticated as business groups have funded more than 100 think tanks and "grassroots" organizations devoted to portraying the legal system as out of control. Much of their message has been crafted with focus groups and sophisticated polling so that the results are tailor-made for mass media consumption. Web sites like the Manhattan Institute's Overlawyered.com have made it even easier for reporters to find examples of crazy lawsuits (in fact, several of those featured in the Newsweek story are highlighted on the site). Tobacco companies alone spent $15 million in a single year during the industry's campaign to push the "lawsuit abuse" message while fighting off smokers' lawsuits, according to documents uncovered through the tobacco litigation and published by the Center for Justice and Democracy. Since 2002, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, through its Institute for Legal Reform, has spent more than $60 million lobbying for lawsuit restrictions. The highly coordinated advertising campaigns and subtle media manipulation ensure that most Americans now take as a given that the legal system needs an overhaul. Republican leaders have also recognized that legislation that would limit the earnings of trial lawyers would not only benefit the chronic defendants in corporate America. It would also strike a blow against the Democratic Party, for which trial lawyers represent the second-biggest group of donors. In 1997, pollster Frank Luntz coached Republican members of Congress, "Unlike most complex issues, the problems in our civil justice system come with a ready-made villain: the lawyer. Few classes of Americans are more reviled by the general public than attorneys…. It's almost impossible to go too far when it comes to demonizing lawyers." The PR campaign has been highly effective. Between 1986 and 1999, according to the American Tort Reform Association, 30 states enacted restrictions on punitive damages capping the amount that can be awarded, and seven states had also capped noneconomic damage awards. Last year alone, 20 states passed more laws restricting citizens' ability to hold corporations and other individuals accountable in court. Despite these fairly radical changes and ample evidence of the corporate media strategy behind it, reporters continue to perpetuate many of the myths about the legal system. In doing so, they have helped interest groups change the focus of public debate. Rather than run stories about the predatory lending practices of finance companies that generate class action lawsuits, for instance, news outlets lead with stories about the size of jury verdicts and the portion that might go to the plaintiffs' lawyers. Rather than write about the lack of health insurance that leads injured people to seek compensation through the courts, reporters focus upon the poor, rural juries that want to bankrupt honest doctors and businesses. Instead of focusing on the indifference of McDonald's corporate management to customer injuries, the press has questioned whether Stella Lybeck was at fault for her injuries because she was dumb enough to try to drink hot coffee in a moving vehicle. Michael McCann, director of the University of Washington's Comparative Law and Society Studies Center, believes these stories catch on because the corporate backed "tort reformers" have done a spectacular job of creating a compelling narrative from lawsuits that fit reporters' conception of conventional wisdom. He says that because reporters rarely cover civil trials, they are susceptible to the abstract stories of irresponsible litigants egged on by greedy lawyers. "That's why Americans respond to this, because it's a morality tale about the loss of personal responsibility," McCann says. The coverage is not so different from the stories in the early 1980s about the welfare queens that turned out to be largely apocryphal but were part of a concerted assault on government programs for the poor. The welfare queen has simply been replaced by the irresponsible plaintiff. One of the consequences of this kind of news coverage is that it may be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Americans may believe that the country is too litigious, not because of personal experience, as with the people featured by Newsweek (none of whom had ever been sued) but because of the media coverage telling them about the lawsuit crisis. Ironically, too, some academic researchers suspect that the skewed news coverage might actually then be making Americans more litigious even as they support measures making it harder for them to pursue legitimate cases in court. In a 1997 article for the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Legal Studies, Herbert Kritzer and J. Mitchell Pickerill wrote, "The effect of this rhetoric is to make people think that if anything goes wrong they can get significant compensation. The result is that lawyers spend many hours explaining to potential clients that this is simply not true." Marc Galanter, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, put it well when he wrote in a 1998 law-review article tracing litigation myths, "As in the case of chemical weapons, it is hard for those who launch media distortions to keep them away from their own troops." INTRODUCTION: One of the catch phrases of tort reformers is “frivolous lawsuits” – a lawsuit that has no legal basis, or is so petty that the suit isn’t justified. Often, tort reformers cite high profile cases, such as the McDonalds coffee case to try and show that the court system is “broken” and “runaway juries” routinely award ridiculous verdicts in frivolous cases. Tort reformers promise that the legislation they propose will put an end to frivolous lawsuits by putting up various barriers that will prevent frivolous lawsuits from being filed in the first place. What tort reformers don’t tell you is that the legal system already has three safety mechanisms in place to prevent, dismiss, and correct frivolous lawsuits. The first mechanism, the contingent-fee agreement prevents frivolous lawsuits from being filed in the first place. THE CONTINGENT-FEE AGREEMENT: Have you ever seen or heard an ad for an attorney who promises something like, “No cost to you unless we collect!”? Nearly every attorney that brings a lawsuit for a personal injury case does so under a contingent-fee agreement. While most people understand how the contingent-fee arrangement works, I’ll explain it in detail for those who do not. Let’s say you’ve had an auto accident and decide to hire an attorney. If you shop around, you’ll find that contingent-fee agreements vary from attorney to attorney. Generally, they will range from anywhere from 25% to 50% of the total settlement or judgment you receive. For simplicity, we’ll say you hire an attorney on a 40% contingent-fee agreement. If you were to receive $10,000.00, the attorney would get $4,000.00 in that case as his fee, in addition to being reimbursed for any expenses he or she incurred in building your case. These expenses include obvious things like court filing fees and office expenses, but there some expenses in many cases that the general public doesn’t know about: expert witness fees. What is an expert witness fee? Well, in most complicated cases – and virtually all medical malpractice cases – the plaintiff needs to hire expert witnesses to help prove his or her case. In some states, you’re not even allowed to file a medical malpractice case without first having a report from an expert witness that says, in essence, the doctor in question committed malpractice. All cases are gambles, no matter how strong the facts may be. When you hire an attorney on a contingent-fee basis, he’s gambling with his time and money. While attorneys are willing to gamble as to when, if, and how much they’ll get paid, expert witnesses generally are not. Expert witnesses won’t wait until your case is over to get paid – they want to be paid up front, and it’s the attorney who has to pay them out of his or her pocket. As you might surmise, expert witnesses aren’t cheap: they’re highly qualified professionals who generally have high hourly fees. What kind of expert witnesses might be needed in a given case? Let’s take some real-life examples of experts and what they charge: Professional Engineers: If you’re suing a manufacturer because you got hurt by a product that you think was poorly designed, you’ll need a professional engineer. One engineer in Garland, Texas charges $225.00 per hour, with a 50% premium for deposition and court time. So, if that engineer spent ten hours reviewing a design, and five hours in court, that would cost your attorney almost $4,000.00. In a complicated design case, it’s not uncommon for several engineers to spend fifty or more hours evaluating the product. Doctors: If you have a medical malpractice case, or any case where the extent of your injuries is called into question, you’ll need to hire a doctor as an expert witness. Doctors, as you might guess, are expensive. Plan on having your attorney spend around $250.00 per hour, possibly twice that much for a well-regarded specialist. In a complicated medical case, you may need three or more doctors, each of whom may have to spend ten to twenty hours – an out-of-pocket cost to your lawyer of $10,000.00 or more. Nurses: You’ll probably need a nurse in any case where you need a doctor. While they’re not as expensive as doctors, they’ll still be around $75.00 an hour. Just like doctors, they’ll also probably have to spend ten to twenty hours on a case - $750.00 or more from your lawyer’s checking account. Surprisingly, finding expert witnesses isn’t easy. Often, a lawyer will have to “shop around” for experts. That means your lawyer will spend time finding experts with the right qualifications for your case. Then, he or she would gather all the pertinent materials and send them to an expert for review. Sometimes, the expert will review the records and say that they’re not interested in the case. Or perhaps they’ll review the records and not find anything helpful to your case. Either way, the expert will still have to be paid, and it’s your lawyer who will have to pay them. It’s not uncommon to go through two or three experts, and several thousand dollars, before the “right” expert is found. Of course, it’s also not uncommon for a lawyer to think his or her client has a great case, only to be told by several experts that the case has little or no merit. In such an instance, that lawyer will be out-of-pocket thousands of dollars, and the client will owe nothing to the attorney – thanks to the contingent-fee agreement. Now, if you were a lawyer with a contingent-fee agreement, would you be willing to spend thousands of your own dollars and hundreds of hours on a case you’re not confident you can win? If your answer is “no” to that question, then you’ve just seen how contingent-fee agreements prevent frivolous lawsuits from being filed. While contingent-fee agreements prevent frivolous lawsuits, they also do something even more important: They provide access to the courts to everyone. In general, a lawyer’s hourly fee will be anywhere from $100 to $300 an hour. Not many people can afford to pay that kind of money to an attorney for more than a few hours. If you were to have to pay an hourly fee to an attorney to bring a complicated injury case to trial, you might have to spend $50,000 on the attorney. If contingent-fee agreements were abolished, two things would happen: Only the rich would be able to file lawsuits, and attorneys would be far more willing to file a lawsuit that doesn’t have merit; when you’re paid by the hour, it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. No case is “easy”, and in general, the more complicated the case, the harder it is to win. Contingent-fee agreements are what attract lawyers to the complicated cases. Contingent-fee agreements are what drive lawyers to take those cases to trial, instead of settling for a fraction of what the case is really worth. Contingent-fee agreements are what allow the poorest of the poor to hold corporate juggernauts accountable for their actions in court of law. Is it any surprise then that some special interest groups are attacking the contingent-fee agreement? They argue that it’s not fair for attorneys to take such a “large percentage” of any recovery of their clients. Their arguments have worked: Some states have put limits on the percentage an attorney can take. Damage caps and attorney-fee caps work together to make the complicated cases less enticing for lawyers, and the consequence is that those who traditionally receive large jury verdicts – the catastrophically injured, or the families of those who are killed – won’t be able to find attorneys to bring their case to court. The corporate entities that support tort reform won’t be held accountable when they act irresponsibly or unethically, and will instead enter into confidential settlement agreements with those who are harmed by their products. The irony is that as those corporate entities take away the individual’s right to a jury trial, they’re doing it under the guise of protecting the public from “greedy lawyers.” So, what happens if an inept lawyer decides to file a frivolous lawsuit? The second safety mechanism, the Summary Judgment, would be used to dismiss the suit. THE SUMMARY JUDGMENT: Tort reformers say that the courts are overwhelmed with “frivolous lawsuits” – lawsuits that have no legal basis, or are so petty as to not be worth the time of the court system. They say that to protect the justice system, we need to make it harder for individuals to file lawsuits. But what if instead of putting barriers up that could prevent legitimate lawsuits from being filed, there was a tool that could quickly and easily dismiss frivolous lawsuits? What if this tool not only dismissed frivolous lawsuits, but could also be used to force the plaintiffs in frivolous lawsuits to pay the attorney fees of the defendant? This tool not only exists, but has been in use in America since 1937 ; it’s called the Summary Judgment. The purpose of the summary judgment is to determine whether there is a genuine need for trial. When a party files a motion for summary judgment, they’re telling the court that there is no need for trial because the facts and law applicable to the case would prevent the other side from winning. We’ll use a fictitious car wreck as an example of how a summary judgment would dispose of a frivolous lawsuit: Mr. Smith runs a red light and slams into Mr. Jones. Mr. Smith claims the light was green, but two witnesses say the light was red. Mr. Smith is given a citation from a police officer for running a red light. Mr. Smith decides to sue Mr. Jones for mental anguish. Mr. Jones hires a lawyer. Mr. Jones’ lawyer spends a few hours drafting a motion for summary judgment. At the end of the motion, Mr. Jones’ lawyer requests he be awarded attorney’s fees from Mr. Smith because the lawsuit is frivolous. The lawyer for Mr. Jones files his motion for summary judgment, and includes with it pictures of the accident scene, affidavits from the witnesses, an affidavit from the police officer, an affidavit from Mr. Jones, and a copy of the police report. All of the affidavits and the police report say that Mr. Smith ran a red light. In such a case, the judge would most likely grant the summary judgment, and Mr. Smith’s lawsuit would be dismissed. The judge could also decide to order Mr. Smith to pay for Mr. Jones’ attorney’s fees. In the end, Mr. Jones wouldn’t be out any money, and Mr. Smith would have had his day in court. The requirements for summary judgment vary from state to state, but in general, you need to show the court two things: 1: That the facts clearly support your side. In Texas, for example, you have to show that “reasonable and fair minded people” cannot possibly come to different conclusions about what the evidence shows. If reasonable and fair minded people could come to different conclusions about the facts of the case, then summary judgment shouldn’t be granted. 2: That the law is clearly on your side. A common use of the summary judgment is to dispose of lawsuits where the statute of limitations has passed. Many states have a four-year statute of limitations for breach of contract. So, if you bought a car in 1995 and tried to sue the dealer for breach of contract in 2000, you wouldn’t legally be able to win – the statute of limitations would bar you from recovery – and the judge would grant the car dealer’s motion for summary judgment. In medical malpractice lawsuits, there is a two-year statute of limitations. Summary judgments have disposed of frivolous lawsuits for decades. They allow a defendant in a frivolous lawsuit to get out of the case quickly and without the expense of a full-fledged trial. Often, the defendants are even awarded their attorney’s fees for preparation of the motion for summary judgment. The bottom line is that because of the summary judgment, very few “frivolous lawsuits” ever make it to trial. It could even be argued that any case that makes it past summary judgment can’t be a frivolous lawsuit because a judge – not a “runaway jury” – decided that the case had enough merit to present to a jury. Tort reformers want to make it hard for you to file a lawsuit, harder for you to win a lawsuit, and impossible for you to collect a meaningful amount of money in a case involving serious or permanent injury. To accomplish these goals, they claim that frivolous lawsuits and runaway juries are destroying the justice system. However, tort reformers don’t talk about how summary judgments have been effectively used for over 100 years to dispose of untold thousands of lawsuits. The next time someone tries to persuade you that we need more barriers to filing lawsuits, ask them why they don’t think the summary judgment is getting the job done. Let’s assume that a frivolous lawsuit makes it past summary judgment and a “runaway jury” awards more money then they should. Several judicial remedies exist to correct these verdicts. DIRECTED VERDICTS: Most people think that a jury can make whatever decision they want. This isn’t the case at all. A judge can issue a directed verdict, which tells the jury that they must make a certain decision. Usually, a directed verdict is used when something comes out at trial that prevents the other side from winning as a matter of law. For example, it could come out that a key event happened so long ago that the statute of limitations prevents the plaintiff from winning. In such a case, there would most likely be a directed verdict for the defendant. Less often, the evidence in a case is so strong that the judge feels that there can be only one verdict, and he or she would order the jury to return that verdict. One example would be a case where someone caught the auto accident in question on videotape, and the tape clearly shows that one of the parties to the lawsuit ran a red light, and is therefore at fault. In such a case, the judge may direct the jury to find in favour of the person who did not run the red light. Directed verdicts are more common in criminal cases than in civil cases, because the summary judgment would typically be used to dispose of a civil case before a jury trial. However, directed verdicts can and do dispose of civil lawsuits without merit. JUDGMENT NOT WITHSTANDING THE VERDICT (JNOV): Everyone is familiar with the concept of appealing a decision; if you lose your case, you can generally appeal it to a higher court. However, not everyone is familiar with a Judgment Not Withstanding the Verdict (JNOV). JNOV is an acronym for Judgment non obstante veredicto, which is Latin for “notwithstanding the verdict”. A losing party in a lawsuit can often file a motion with the court requesting a JNOV. A JNOV is one of the ways that a judge can reduce the dollar amount of a verdict. Some states require that an attorney file a motion for a JNOV, while other states allow a judge to issue a JNOV sua sponte, which is Latin for “of its own accord.” A JNOV can set aside an entire verdict, or just parts of a verdict. Here’s a good example of how a JNOV could correct an improper jury verdict: In many states, if a jury finds that the conduct of a defendant in a lawsuit was “knowing” and/or “intentional”, the court must double or triple the amount of a jury verdict. Let’s assume that in a medical malpractice case, a doctor made an honest mistake. Maybe he transposed the numbers in a prescription, and the plaintiff ended up taking too much medication. But, for whatever reason, the jury found that this honest mistake was intentional, and awarded $100,000 dollars. Because the doctor’s conduct was found by the jury to be intentional, the judge would have to award the plaintiff $300,000 dollars. However, if the evidence was very convincing that this was an honest mistake, a JNOV could eliminate the finding of the jury that the doctor’s conduct was intentional, and the plaintiff would be awarded only the $100,000 dollar jury verdict. Directed verdicts and JNOV’s are two mechanisms that judges have available to prevent juries from awarding damages when they should not, and to reduce jury verdicts that are clearly excessive. Of course, tort reformers don’t tell the public about these tools; they want to be able to prevent these large jury verdicts from ever occurring, and to prevent the bad press that accompanies the verdicts. SETTLING AFTER A DECISION: In many cases, such as the famed McDonald’s coffee case, the plaintiffs in a lawsuit will settle the case for less than they were awarded. In the McDonalds case, Stella Liebeck was awarded $2.7 million dollars, and the judge reduced the award to $480,000. Stella settled with McDonalds for a confidential amount less than $480,000. Plaintiffs and plaintiff’s attorneys are often motivated to settle because a settlement means they won’t have to go through a lengthy and potentially risky appeals process. This is where big companies have the advantage over individual plaintiffs: A major corporation can afford to spend time and money to drag a case out for years. Settlements are extremely common, and are yet another way that very large jury verdicts are reduced. APPEALING THE DECISION: The majority of cases where a jury awards millions of dollars are appealed, and many times, those verdicts are reduced or overturned on appeal. For example, in the Igen case that was discussed earlier, the appellate court reduced the $505 million dollar verdict down to $19 million dollars– a $486 million dollar reduction. While some verdicts are reduced, others are overturned entirely by appellate courts. It’s important to realize that the judges in appellate courts aren’t overly emotional jurors, but are seasoned judges who place far more weight upon the legal issues in a case then on the emotional issues. As such, incredibly large jury verdicts are rarely upheld by the many appellate courts in our country. Despite what tort reformers claim, large jury verdicts are the exception, and not the rule. When juries do return large verdicts, the plaintiffs usually settle for less than verdict or see the verdict reduced or overturned by an appellate court. Our justice system is a system of checks and balances. Before someone can even bring a case, they have to convince an attorney that their case is worth gambling time and money on. The contingent-fee agreement weeds out countless cases that have no merit. Once an attorney accepts the case, a judge will most likely scrutinize the facts and law applicable to the case through a summary judgment. If the judge decides that the case has merit, then the case will be presented to an impartial jury of twelve men and women. If those twelve men and women are convinced that the plaintiff has proven his or her case, the jury will then rule in favor of the plaintiff, and award compensation for the plaintiff’s injuries. The judge has an opportunity to modify, reduce, or set aside the jury’s verdict. Then, the defendant has an opportunity to appeal his case to higher courts, and even more experienced judges can then modify, reduce, or set aside a jury’s verdict. The burden of proof in any case is always on the plaintiff; the deck is stacked in favor of the defendants in both civil and criminal cases. Multimillion-dollar jury verdicts rarely survive the appeals process. Yet tort reformers continue to argue that we need more barriers to file lawsuits, and statutory limitations on how much money can be awarded in the lawsuits we’re able to file. The reason is that the big corporations who push for tort reform don’t want the bad press and public scrutiny that accompanies trials where people are severely injured or killed. Instead, they prefer to enter into confidential settlements that the public never knows about. Tort reform isn’t about fixing a “broken” justice system; it’s about protecting the public image and bottom lines of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world. Tort reform isn’t about protecting doctors from high insurance rates; it’s about protecting their insurers from having to pay large judgments. Tort reform isn’t about keeping “greedy lawyers” from filing frivolous lawsuits; it’s about keeping those who are severely injured out of the court system and away from the public eye. October 30th 2003 by Permalink |
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