Posted on 06/29/2004 1:36:35 PM PDT by aynrandfreak
A new group of Republican attorneys on Monday accused their party of selling out to special interests in backing legislation that would impose new restrictions on Missouri's legal system with the hope of reducing jury awards in injury lawsuits.
In recent years, Republican state lawmakers have pushed so-called "tort reform" bills, which seek to restrict where personal injury lawsuits can be filed and impose lower limits on jury awards in medical malpractice cases.
The Legislature's Republican majority muscled the bills to passage in each of the past two years, but Democratic Gov. Bob Holden vetoed the bills both times.
Stockton lawyer Mike Holzknecht has been lobbying officials in Jefferson City against the legislation and recently persuaded about 25 other lawyers to help him form the Missouri Republican Trial Lawyers Caucus.
"We Republicans are wrong to sell out to these special interests our constitutional right to a jury trial," Holzknecht, the group's president, said Monday.
Supporters of "tort reform" say it is needed to reduce doctors' premiums for medical malpractice insurance. They say if jury awards are smaller, insurers will be less fearful of having to pay a big award, so insurance premiums won't be as high.
Missouri enacted an original round of "tort reform" in 1986, when lawmakers and officials hoped doctors' premiums would fall. Premiums eventually leveled off, but they have now risen again, and some people believe another round of tort legislation is needed. But Holzknecht said the past 18 years have proved that wrong.
"History has borne out the fact that those caps haven't done anything over the past (18) years other than save the insurance companies a lot of money," he said. "History has also borne out the fact that the only thing that affects insurance companies is the financial markets."
Secretary of State Matt Blunt, the leading Republican candidate for governor, has made the lawsuit limits a central part of his platform.
"The position of the Republican Party and its candidates on the issue of tort reform and particularly the crisis in medical care is quite clear," said John Hancock, Blunt's campaign spokesman. "And while there might be a small number in the GOP ranks that oppose tort reform efforts, our party and its leadership solidly support the urgent need for reform."
Holzknecht refused to say whether he would oppose a Republican candidate who supports new lawsuit limits, but he said the candidate would probably have a harder time getting elected without the group's support.
"I would hope that Matt Blunt listens to us and agrees with us that bashing our jury system and bashing our trial lawyers and bashing our justice system doesn't reflect well upon Republicans," he said.
Holzknecht was appointed Hickory County prosecutor in 1988 by then-Gov. John Ashcroft and was later elected to a full term as prosecutor before settling into private legal practice. He counts former top Ashcroft deputy Edward "Chip" Robertson and former Republican legislator David Steelman in his group. Steelman's wife, state Sen. Sarah Steelman, was the only Republican senator to vote against the bill's passage this year.
Robertson, a former state Supreme Court judge, said doctors' support for the tort bill is the result of a misinformation campaign. In talking with doctors, he said, they said they want provisions that are already in law, including a cap on noneconomic damages.
"Every single one of those things is already in place, and when I tell them that, they say 'You're not telling me the truth.' And when I show it (existing law) to them, they say 'That's not what we've been told,"' Robertson said.
Only one revision to tort law is needed: loser pays. It would clean up the system immediately.
Huh?? Wonder where he gets his insurance?
Farmer's Insurance decided not to sell malpractice insurance in Missouri anymore. If it's so lucrative, as the lawyers say, why would any company want to stop selling here? The litigation explosion has made it so there's not a certain enough profit for insurance companies even with raising rates to their current levels.
LOSER PAY!
The standard for proof should be the same for civil just as it is in criminal!LAWSUIT is just another word for THEFT!
Republican Trial Lawyers.
Yeah, both of them......
Loser pay and:
(1) burden of proof should be "clear and convincing" evidence in civil cases;
(2) no punitive damages;
(3) no class action lawsuits.
Three suggestions from a Republican trial lawyer who is in favor of tort reform.
Encourage Legal Reform: Kill All the Lawyers.
It gives me the creeps just stepping into a lawyers office. I don't understand how it is that those that make the laws conveniently make a lot of money based on those laws. Isn't there some sort of conflict of interest?
AMEN!!
"The Legislature's Republican majority muscled the bills to passage in each of the past two years, but Democratic Gov. Bob Holden vetoed the bills both times."
Vetoed. By a democrat.
The price we all pay from others that vote-in the liberal agenda.
"Republican trial lawyers oppose 'tort reform'?"
More like
"Greedy RINO Special Interest angered by attempt to stop their theft.
Actually, what's needed is "loser's lawyer pays".
taking b**lsh**t cases on contingency is not attractive,
it will help.
I know that the sleazy, wing-tipped, trial lawyer lobby would have you believe that the state of Texas has become some sort of Dickensian paradise. With avaricious corporate malefactors lording it over it over the generally helpless population of aggrieved citizens, but it's simply not true!
The reform of that state's judicial system (in the best antidote to Marxist-inspired oppression ever devised. That is, DEMOCRACY!) was the best thing that ever happened for the ordinary taxpaying Texan.
Trial lawyers be damned!
And I'm sure they will be. God keeps lists of these things, ya' know.
Loser pay and:
(1) burden of proof should be "clear and convincing"
evidence in civil cases;
(2) no punitive damages;
(3) no class action lawsuits.
Three suggestions from a Republican trial lawyer who is in favor of tort reform.
I don't see necessarily have a problem with number 1.
The elimination of punitive damages helps my clients, but I don't see how it helps small plaintiffs exact a price from a multi-national corporation for its conduct. If my clients have to pay compensatories, on a case by case basis, they would have no reason to change the conduct. (Of course, you could replace extra-legislative sanction with more regulation, but that hurts business and the cost is only passed on to the consumer.
As for no class actions. That would be great NEWS for my fortune 500 clients. Imagine a plaintiff with a 9th grade education trying to hire, by the hour, a plaintiff's lawyer to litigate a products liability case against a pharmaceutical company. Good luck. I hate defending them, many are frivolous, and they cost us millions, but I don't know how we effectively eliminate class-action suits. That only favors corporations. Don't get me wrong -- as a Conservative trial lawyer and defense counsel, my clients would LOVE these proposed reforms. But, you will never convince me that the little guy would benefit.
They are trial lawyers first and foremost.
They do not create wealth, but try to take it away, like good demos, an example is John Edwards.
Bahaw!
Let's see you come up with a fitting retort to that one, Mizzoulaw!
Besides, whenever a surgeon leaves one of his medical instruments inside of me, I follow a s.o.p.
Go to my uncle Festus, and have him fish it out with a wire hanger.
-William Shakespeare.
BEWARE THE BLACK TURBAN YAZID!
-good times, G.J.P. (Jr.)
Wow Reagan never proposed tort reform, no wonder. Although IMO, Reagan would be all for tort reform, but he had a bigger problem to deal with, the soviet union, which he accomplished in dismantling. He got that done, now it is, IMO, his heir in the political realm, Bush/Cheney, to clean up the mess that your trial lawyer union(John Edwards, President of such union) has created.
Okay, loser pays AND
Winner gets the snot taxed out of the proceeds....
END result....ZERO
Question:
What do you call an intelligent lawyer?
Answer:
An anomaly.
See tag-line below.
Oxymoron = Ethical Lawyer
Trial Liars.
This guy is FOS! I've been in the insurance industry for over twenty years, handling injury cases, and I can guarantee you that insurance companies are not affected by the market to any noticeable degree whatsoever (they plan for market volatility in all of their projections and reserves). What they cannot factor into their projections are runaway courts and runaway juries who ignore the facts of a case and render a decision based strictly on emotion, and award huge sums on top of it. That is why there is the old saying that a plaintiff's attorney gets an erection whenever he sees a little kid in a wheelchair, because it means there must be a big payday somewhere to be had. Any plaintiff's attorney (if he or she is honest) will tell you that wheeling a kid into the courtroom in a wheelchair trumps the facts and the law any day.
Trouble is, your clients don't pay the punitive awards, their insurance companies do (unless you practice in one of those rare states that have held that punitive damages are uninsurable). Thus, your clients don't pay, we do (because we pay the premiums that make up the payments).
As an alternative to #2 - "no punative damages" - Since punatives are meant to punish and not to compensate plaintiffs, all punative damage awards should go into the state treasury, or a fund that will subsidize liability insurers who reduce premiums. Takes away the adverse incentive for the defendant and still allows corporate wrongdoers to be punished.
that one -- I like. It would have to be a dedicated account, thus, not in the general fund.
"History has borne out the fact that those caps haven't done anything over the past (18) years other than save the insurance companies a lot of money."
This is still true, whether you think they are RINOs or not. I think of all the things that should be true based on insurance companies claiming the cost was worth the safety (mandatory seat belt laws, helmet laws, airbags, etc.) and I can't remember the last time my insurance bill dropped.
I don't like ridiculous awards, either, but I do know this: every time I hear about a 'ridiculous' award, I look into it, and it seems a little less ridiculous when you know the facts of the case and just how the company or person sued ignored prior warnings that their actions were potentially harmful.
Most small businessmen I know worry more about health insurance and workers' comp crap than liability bills. Tort reform is only a big issue to insurance companies, big companies who ought to be more careful, and doctors who ought to be more caring--and then they wouldn't have to worry about being so careful.
Then why are insurers saying they don't want to insure medical malpractice insurance in Missouri if it's such a lucrative busines for them.
Gosh, because pretending they will yank policies if the legislature doesn't kowtow to their mighty lobbying might make them even MORE money if it succeeds?
Look, freak, Ayn Rand knew that government should stay out of business. It's that government got into medicine in the first place that caused the problem--but not tort claims, as you'd think. The doctors want to bitch about how awful the insurance companies are and the lawyers are, but they have a CARTEL that government keeps pretty exclusively theirs, guaranteeing they'll make a mint. The insurance industry makes a fortune off Medicare's inflated payments for senior bills. And both groups have fought tooth and nail to keep qualified foreign doctors out of the U.S., and restrict prescription rights to M.D.s as much as they can, so they can keep their scam going.
They'll continue their union-like policies as long as people like you believe the reason health care is 'so expensive,' is tort claims, and not the doctors' hand-in-glove fit with the insurance industry, while government backs their billing inflation and fictional 'rising costs.'
Don't buy it. I hate trial lawyers, too, but claiming that doctors pay too much for insurance and the insurance industry is going broke on tort claims is just a joke.
I'm no fan of liberal doctors or insurance companies making money from the gov't, but I think you're willfully delusional if you think that lawyers aren't the main problem in rising medical costs. They're working with the dems to perpetuate this 'heatlhcare crisis' to create more voter demand for socialized medicine. Sure, advocate cutting gov't payouts to doctors and many others, but don't use that language of free markets to be anti-tort reform.
You will salute when you speak to Napoleon, sir! Count me among the willfully delusional, because I KNOW government is the main problem.
They're working with the dems to perpetuate this 'heatlhcare crisis' to create more voter demand for socialized medicine.
Why would they do that? I have yet to see a single trial lawyer say the 'solution' is socialized medicine--from what I hear from the weasels, the solution is better testing and more stringent licensing of doctors.
Sure, advocate cutting gov't payouts to doctors and many others, but don't use that language of free markets to be anti-tort reform.
I'm not anti-tort-reform if you're for opening the medical markets at the same time. Bring back the quacks and let the floodgates open for RNs to be Ns again, and DOs and naturopaths and any jackass that wants to prescribe drugs without needing an MD. But if you put tort caps on doctors, what's to stop them from charging what they want and restricting new players in the market even more, with a union in place that's every bit as strong as the airline pilots and much more dangerous? What's to stop them from further restraint of trade? NOTHING.
I'm for tort reform just as I am for open borders in the U.S. As soon as we know which aliens are crossing our the borders and where they are at all times, and as soon as we have removed incentives for them to do so like welfare and free medical care, then the borders should be a turnstile where all we do is check i.d. If you want me to be for tort reform, you have to agree to break the unionization and governmentalization of the American medical establishment first.
It should happen at the same time, incrementally.
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