Targetting Trial Lawyers

Scripps Howard News Service ^ | May 2, 2003 | Stephen Moore

[ysoh]

I am referring to the 1998 tobacco litigation agreement reached between states and tobacco companies. This famous legal settlement required the tobacco companies to reimburse states nearly $250 billion over 25 years for the smoking-related health care costs incurred by state financed Medicaid programs.

[ysoh]

John Edwards for president?? NOT!!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

We can't afford it.

[Mister Baredog]

Will the Daschle Democrats side with states and cities and children and cancer patients, or will they side with their millionaire benefactors

That must be a retorical question. They will use their liberal media friends to try to SPIN SPIN SPIN until they convince enough of their USEFUL IDIOTS supporters that the "evil" REPS are up to no good, let's hope they can't get away with it this time.

[RicocheT]

Ha! Getting a trial lawyer to refund a mis-gotten fee is NEVER going to happen. It goes against every fiber of his snake/shark/weasel makeup.

The American Trial Attorney lobby will muscle the House and Senate to give up this idea and every Democrat candidate for president will assist the lawyers to sink this idea. The earth will stop rotating before an attorney gives back the money that bought his private jet.

[Wilhelm Tell]

We need serious tort reform. Our legal system is more and more resembling a cross between a lottery and an extortion racket. Perhaps it is time that trial lawyers learned to live on a mere $2,000 per hour like the rest of us.

[Rifleman]

Yup. Lawyers follow the First Rule of Aquisition -- "Once you have the money, NEVER give it back!"

[Pikachu_Dad]

So put them all in jail for theft.

[DPB101]

Lawyers follow the First Rule of Aquisition -- "Once you have the money, NEVER give it back!"

Lawyer rule #2: The vigorish to the Democratic Party gets paid before the family eats.

[fat city]

They have come up with a formula in which everyone wins. States win because they get $9 billion. Children win because some of this money will be used for anti-smoking campaigns to educate school kids on the dangers of smoking. Our health care system wins because some of this money can be used to develop cures for cancer and heart disease.

Nobody wins, you moron. Just as bad as the slimey trial lawyers, you're dividing the money stolen from a legal industry.

[VRWCmember]

In that deal, a small gang of several hundred trial lawyers walked off with settlement money of an estimated $10-to-$15 billion. ... It was lawyers - about 500 of them. ... Never before have so many billionaires been created out of thin air overnight .... "These fees were outrageously excessive," fumes Michael Horowitz, a legal expert at the Hudson Institute. "This money should have gone to states, not to make billionaires out of lawyers."

While I am loathe to defend lawyers -- especially scum-sucking, ambulance-chasing, contingency-fee-gouging personal injury lawyers involved in the fraudulent tobacco suits -- the author of this article is playing fast and loose with the facts, and has created an intellectual fraud as well. First of all, note that the settlement money is estimated at $10 to $15 Billion, and this fee is divided among several hundred (about 500) lawyers. Let's go high on the settlement and low on the number of lawyers and call it $15 Billion between 300 lawyers. Given those estimates, each lawyer pockets (an admittedly outrageous) $50 million in fees. How many billionaires did that create? Did most of these lawyers already have over $950 million in net worth?

Horowitz may be a legal expert, but he's obviously not a math expert. The fees are outrageous, but they didn't make billionaires out of these attorneys, just more obscenely rich millionaires. (And obscene only in the sense that the fees were extorted from the tobacco companies in excessive amounts by a legal lotto system that is out of control and in desperate need of reform.)

I hope the Senators are successful in this attempt to return some of these excessive fees to the states, but let's not resort to distortion and lies to justify it, OK?

[NovemberCharlie]

Yup. Lawyers follow the First Rule of Aquisition -- "Once you have the money, NEVER give it back!"

Indeed. When Cornyn first became AG of Texas, he tried to do much the same thing. I think they finally stuck a deal with the lawyers that gave them an ADDITIONAL 5% on top of the 15% they had gotten originally.

So I wouldn't be too optimistic about this stunt.

[PistolPaknMama]

Read the article again. The actual settlement was over $250 billion. $10-15 billion is the actually attorney's fees that the article stated "the lawyer walked off" with.

[VRWCmember]

And I would suggest YOU read the article again, or at least the specific portion I referenced. The "lawyer" that you described as walking off with $10 to $15 billion is actually a group of several hundred lawyers. If you divide up $15 billion in fees among several hundred lawyers you won't make billionaires out of many of those lawyers will you?

[PistolPaknMama]

Besides he didn't say how many billionaires were created. Using your math, even 15 of the 300 lawyers could have become billionaires overnight. You have to agree that's a lot of billionaires. That means the other 285 lawyers still became very rich, but maybe not billionaires.

I'm sure there were probably lawyers in this case from the beginning, and they got most of the pot. As the cases grew, more lawyers jumped on...the last lawyers in got the least amount of the money. So yes it is very possible lots of billionaires were created over night.