Most of the abuse of the Torts system is for the small claims. Its cheaper for the hospital to pay out $3K to settle a BS claim than it is to litigate it. When you get into mulit-million dollar wrongful death cases the plaintiff has a pretty tough job of proving actual negligence in most cases.
The real variable in Torts awards is the jury. In some places, the desire to punish the wealthy is the motivator. In a case in Knoxville not too long ago that I know about, a clear cut case where the defendent was probably criminally negligent was found for the defendant because one juror didn't care what the defendant did, because it was god's will that the plaintiff died.
...There are other, more serious costs and not just in health care, according to “Jackpot Justice: The True Cost of America’s Tort System,” a new study from the conservative Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. The study is the most comprehensive ever done on the direct and indirect costs of allowing personal liability lawyers virtual free rein in our courts in recent decades, according to the PRI. Among the other health care costs calculated by the PRI are an estimated 3.4 million people who can’t get insurance because of excessive premiums and, worst of all, 114,000 people who “would be alive and working today, but are not due to inefficiencies in the tort system over the last two decades” that delayed critically needed new drugs and treatments.
Overall, tort abuse costs the American people $865 billion a year, or $2.4 billion 365 days a year. That’s 27 times as much as the federal government spends protecting Americans from terrorists each year, 30 times what the National Institutes for Health spends annually researching cures for deadly diseases and 13 times the amount devoted to school aid by the Education Department. The losses include 51,000 jobs destroyed by asbestos-related litigation alone, plus the $559 million in pensions those workers would have received. Then there is the $684 billion in lost shareholder value and 367 billion in lost product sales due to lowered research investment.