Indeed.
I think we all know on what side of the line tort lawyers fall.
Posted on 07/07/2010 5:14:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
Tort lawyers lie. They say their product liability suits are good for us. But their lawsuits rarely make our lives better. They make lawyers and a few of their clients better off -- but for the majority of us, they make life much worse.
Years back, as one of America's first consumer reporters, I'd avenge harmed consumers by bringing cameras to the offending business and confronting the crooks. My work warned others about the dangers in the marketplace but didn't do much for the victims.
So I thought about those personal injury lawyers. They could do more good -- they could sue bad companies, force them to change and get the victims money. I started referring hurt consumers to lawyers.
Imagine my shock when consumers called to say their lawyers took most of the money!
Even when the lawyers do help their clients, they hurt everyone else because fear of their lawsuits takes away many good things: Swimming pools, playgrounds and gymnastics programs close because liability insurance is so expensive. Kids lose their favorite places to hang out in the summer.
More importantly, innovators dump potentially life-saving inventions. Companies that started work on a safer asbestos substitute, an AIDS vaccine and a Lyme disease vaccine gave up the research because any work in those areas risked stirring up the lawyers. The liability risk was too great.
It's why I've come to think of lawyers the way I think about nuclear missiles. We need them to keep us safe. But we avoid using missiles because we understand the collateral damage they do. We ought to avoid lawyers for the same reason. I'll explore this problem Thursday night on my Fox Business program.
Look at health care. The lawyers claim they punish bad doctors and win compensation for injured patients, and their suits add "less than 2 percent to the cost." But there is another side to that story.
Dr. Manny Alvarez, chairman of obstetrics at Hackensack University Medical Center, points out that 1 or 2 percent is just the direct cost. The indirect costs are far higher because suits force doctors and hospitals to practice defensive medicine and do unnecessary tests.
"If ... you walk in (an emergency room) with a headache, what do they do? They order a CAT scan, an MRI, you name it, " Alvarez said.
They do surgery on people who may not need it. That's safer for the doctor, although it's not safer for the patients.
Vice presidential candidate John Edwards made $40 million to $80 million -- he won't say how much -- pushing tort lawsuits, many of them related to cerebral palsy, which he attributed to doctors not doing C-sections.
What happened afterward? C-sections increased from 7 percent of all births to over 30 percent.
This is why I call lawyers "parasites." C-sections are bad for lots of reasons. They cost much more, they require a longer hospital stay, and they are riskier to the woman.
Have the extra C-sections at least reduced the rate of cerebral palsy? No. Not a bit. Turns out that, in most cases, the lawyers were wrong.
They were wrong about silicone breast implants, too. But they sure aren't giving the money back.
One of the most successful trial lawyers is Geoffrey Fieger. His law firm bills itself as the top personal injury firm in America.
"The higher ups in our society are protected really by the law, and the only thing an ordinary person can do is hire somebody like me, a warrior, to go after those higher-ups," he told me.
Fieger, like John Edwards, made millions on cerebral palsy cases. He denies that the C-section rate went up because doctors fear lawyers like him. He says doctors do C-sections to make money. Or because they are lazy. Of course, that makes me wonder why doctors weren't doing as many before the rash of lawsuits. Were doctors less lazy or less interested in money a few decades ago?
"I'm a trial lawyer," he said. "They turned the word trial lawyer into a four-letter word, and I'm telling you I'm the people's warrior, and I am proud to be an American trial lawyer."
And the money is good.
But I repeat myself.....
The wrong Feiger passed away.
This is another aspect of life today that desperately needs to be addressed. It’s like the prospect of overthrowing the Iranian regime. It will have some bad side effects but overall everyone will be better off once the bullet is bitten and tiger is taken on once and for all.
Add to that the cost of illegal immigration to America’s producing shrinking producing class and you suddenly realize why life is not getting any better for our country.
I am not holding my breath, but I do pray daily, literally, that these very expensive problems will addressed in a serious manner.
Who was that?
This is exactly what happened in Maryland. Many kids went to illegal places to swim, the reservoirs and drowned because of lawsuits against legal lifeguarded swimming holes.
The abuse of the tort lawyers is also the abuse of the lawyers who defend against the tort suits. All the lawyers make money off the parasitic actions.
The defense lawyers proudly claim they are free from blame while tacitly approving and even promoting the actions of their brethren.
How far into life has “FOL” (fear of lawyers) gone?
Years ago, in my jewelry store, I had a rather simple, hand turned CUTTER used for the removal of any kind of ring that could not be normally removed. Simple job depending on thickness and width of ring. Then, “come back in three weeks and we’ll resize the ring”. We did not even charge to cut the ring off.
A ring squeezing a swollen finger is the equivalent of a tourniquet left on way too long. Disaster can result.
A woman brought her crying child into my best friend’s store (really him) a metal washer on a finger already turned BLUE. The washer had to be cut twice, into halves and removed, but the boy in a panic kept wiggling and pulling away. At one point he moved his hand and the slow turning cutting blade nicked the hand enough to draw blood.
The washer was removed (no charge of course), the people left and the mother neglected to carefully wash the injured finger and palm. Result...infection big time.
Soon, enter a lawyer, accusing my friend of everything but treason. $4000.00 later the ring cutter was thrown out and people sent to ER’s for what was ONCE a simple courtesy afforded by most stores at the time.
The second ring cutter tossed out was MINE.
FOL struck again.
At the end of the day, who is it that gives out the money here? Why do the liability insurance companies pay? Is it because somebody with a bodily injury or property damage has a lawyer? Or is it that a JURY might decide to give away the store. Stossel does nothing but shoot the messenger here. Juries decide how much compensation to award for an injury, not the lawyers.
So the tort system is based upon individual responsibility. You pay compensation where your own wrongful conduct has caused harm. Members of the community decide if your conduct was substandard and how much you should pay.
What do you propose to replace the tort system? Broad immunity for obstetrics, swimming holes and dangerous machines. Then all you will have is injured people becomming ward of and dependent upon public assistance. Why is that a good thing?
Lawyers make the laws and choose the juries. Pretty convenient, huh?
Is there any other kind of tort lawyer these days?
.....Why is that a good thing?.....
You avoid the issue by attempting to defend an system gone rogue.
American law assumes that ever person must act with Christ like perfection. If that degree of perfection as measured by the ruler of the tort lawyer is not achieved, then money damages are due to the injured party.
The lawyer knows there is no perfection and that his ruler and the court is merely a tool for personal enrichment
As a practicing attorney for over 30 years, I can tell you there is very little wrong with the tort system as it existed in the 1960s. Since then the system has been rigged to permit spurious class actions, non-scientific or pseudo-scientific evidence and a general diminishing between the rule of causal connection between the alleged tort and the harm. Additionally, most companies are able to be sued in multiple jurisdictions. This allows the tort lawyer to select a jurisdiction (usually urban areas) where judges and juries are prone to awarding huge verdicts.
The tort system was originally designed to compensate victims for losses caused by the negligence of another. Activist courts, over the last 40 years, have determined that the system could also be used to enhance consumer safety. The theory is that rather than merely compensating a victim for his or her loss, the system should also be used to force a manufacturer to modify its product to make it more safe. This goal is responsible for many of the abuses and problems we see today in the tort system.
Key quote: “I’ve come to think of lawyers the way I think about nuclear missiles. We need them to keep us safe. But we avoid using missiles because we understand the collateral damage they do. We ought to avoid lawyers for the same reason.”
All parasitic ambulance chasers have a copy of the PDR so they can look up the potential side effects of any drug and pop an ad on tv in order to proclaim “if you have had this or that and have taken this or that drug” you may be eligible for compensation. There has to be a special place in Hell for this scum.
The law does not assume anything - it is an inanimate object. At the end of the case, a Judge tlls the jury what the law is that they should apply, which basically is “did the defendant act with due care under the circumstances?” So I don’t what you are talking about with this weaponized ruler thingie.
Then THE JURY decides. If they demand Christ like perfection, or if they a corporation hating socialists, the can and will return a verdict for the Plaintiff.
“What do you propose to replace the tort system? Broad immunity for obstetrics, swimming holes and dangerous machines. Then all you will have is injured people becomming ward of and dependent upon public assistance. Why is that a good thing?”
This would be OK if Judges would do their part instead of being part of the problem. The Judge can throw out a case with prejudice and eliminate the problem of jury shopping. If I hear one more attorney tell me his poor client deserves money from the State because he is in a wheelchair I will puke. The people I hear this from usually had a blood ethanol approaching O.3 and ran off the road at high speed. Sure it’s the States fault and since we must assign percentage of fault I assign 100% to the fool drinking and driving. I don’t think I (taxpayer)owe a drunk anything.
BFLR
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