Calif. tort reform bills face certain death

Legal Newsline ^ | 2-23-09

[legalwatch]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline)-Republicans in the California Legislature are aiming to level the state's legal landscape through a handful of bills they say will also help jumpstart the state's sputtering economy.

Backed by the state's tort reform group, the bills face an uncertain future -- at best -- given that both houses of the Legislature are controlled by Democrats, often sympathetic to trial lawyers who distribute huge amounts of campaign cash each election cycle.

[CPOSharky]

Backed by the state's tort reform group, the bills face an uncertain future -- at best -- given that both houses of the Legislature are controlled by Democrats, often sympathetic to trial lawyers who distribute huge amounts of campaign cash each election cycle.

Lawyers distribute other people's money. Maggie said (sorta) sooner or later you run out of other people's money.

California is running out of other people's money. What will the lawyers then distribute? What will the libtard politicians do when the lawyer money disappears?

[LS]

Since there is a way to do anything, and since you can sue (and win) over anything, I don't understand why a class action suit cannot be filed by some brilliant lawyer against tort lawyers on grounds of damages to health and well-being that tort lawyers cause.

All it would take is one successful suit against a John Edwards type to reverse the trend, and in the process, the brilliant lawyer would become both famous and rich.

[KeyLargo]

“Four ways to fix a broken legal system”

by Walter Olson on February 23, 2010

Author Philip K. Howard (The Death of Common Sense, Life Without Lawyers) gives a talk at the famous TED conference:

http://overlawyered.com/

[KeyLargo]

From Publishers Weekly In his latest prescriptive survey of American law abuse and its consequences, Howard (The Death of Common Sense, The Collapse of the Common Good) sticks to the formula: one ghastly anecdote after another demonstrating how the justice system hinders freedom and confounds Americans who simply want to do the right thing. Either through litigation or the fear of it, Howard argues, we've ceded our everyday decision-making to the lawyers (we "might as well give a legal club to the most unreasonable and selfish person in the enterprise") resulting in everything from "no running on the playground" signs to a 5-year-old handcuffed at school by police; from diminishing health care quality and spiraling costs to doctors afraid of discussing treatments among themselves over email. Chair of nonpartisan advocacy organization Common Good, Howard has a great deal of knowledge and a catalog of abuses that will elicit fury and despair. For the third time in some 15 years, Howard agitates for change by asking "How did the land of freedom become a legal minefield?"; in this time of financial depression and political hope, Howard may have found the perfect moment to sound his alarm.

[KeyLargo]

Illinois med-mal ruling to boost insurers’ costs 18%: study

By Mike Colias
Feb. 22, 2010
(Crain’s) — Illinois’ medical-malpractice insurers face an 18% jump in costs following the state Supreme Court’s decision earlier this month to strike down a law limiting jury payouts, according to a study released Monday by Milliman Inc.

The consulting firm said the recent removal of caps on malpractice awards would lead to higher costs per malpractice claim, on average. The number of people suing their doctors also is likely to rise, the firm said.

“The magnitude of the estimated increase is largely a reflection of the tort environment in Illinois,” Chad Karls, a principal at Seattle-based Milliman, said in a statement. “In Illinois, claim severities have been among the highest in the country.”

The state Supreme Court’s Feb. 4 ruling struck down a 2005 law that capped jury awards for pain and suffering and other “non-economic” damages to $500,000 per case for physicians and $1 million for hospitals.

The impact on the insurance rates that doctors pay, however, is less clear.

Insurers “were skeptical from the beginning that the legal reforms in Illinois would hold,” so a sharp rate increase as a result of the court’s decision is unlikely, said Susan Forray, a consulting actuary for Milliman.

But if the court had upheld the caps on damages, “we believe that skepticism would have dissipated and been reflected in possible rate decreases in the state,” she said.

Separately, the Illinois Department of Insurance on Saturday said other measures included in the 2005 malpractice-reform law, and also struck down by the court’s ruling, had helped stabilize runaway medical-liability rates. Those reforms gave regulators stronger oversight and required insurers to disclose more about how they set rates.

That helped stoke greater competition in Illinois, where Chicago-based ISMIE Mutual Insurance Co. has more than a 50% marketshare. In 2008, 19 firms wrote a significant amount of malpractice-insurance premiums in Illinois, up from 14 in 2005.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=37194