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(PDF Format) Free Congress Foundation Commentary The Major Incurable Disease – Tort Terror By Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq. October 21, 2009 Unlike other countries, our Federal system and many of our State judicial systems encourage litigation against physicians and hospitals. The practice of medicine is almost unimaginatively sophisticated, as applicable knowledge continually becomes more complicated and more extensive.

Below are some suggestions for lawmakers and judges to bring about a more just country: Intolerance-Justice should be based on each case and circumstance involving current law and precedent. The idiotic case of six-year-old Zachary Christie is akin to the type of lack of foresight that has parents throughout the land scratching their heads. Zachary had NO CLUE he was committing a crime with a nonflexible sentence of 45 days in a reform school. His crime? As a proud new Cub Scout, he brought a multifaceted eating and tool utensil to his school to show his little friends. Conclusion? When...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) rejected the idea of incorporating tort reform into the health care legislation now under consideration. The issue arose when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that tort reform could reduce health care costs by $54 billion over the next decade. “Look, $54 billion is a drop in the bucket for a program that will cost at least $2 trillion over the same period,” Reid observed. “The impact on the taxpayers will be inconsequential.” Reid contrasted the “minuscule savings for taxpayers with the devastating impact that reducing tort costs would have on trial lawyers. The benefit...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline)-While California lawmakers are traditionally busy in their home districts during autumn, after the state Legislature recesses, this year they will be called into at least three special sessions to address a bevy of complex issues. Not among them is legal reform, which proponents say would help kick-start California's lagging economy and draw new industry to the Golden State, where unemployment has topped 12 percent,

Since passing tort reform in 2004, Mississippi has seen the number of medical malpractice claims plummet by 91 percent from its peak. The state's largest medical liability insurer dropped its premiums by 42 percent, and has offered an additional 20 percent rebate each year since tort reform went into effect. That is the story that Mississippi's Republican, governor, Haley Barbour, offered on Friday, speaking at the Heritage Foundation. He also made an observation about President Obama's decision to offer only token "demonstration projects" on lawsuit abuse rather than address it meaningfully in his health care reform proposal.

In his address last week, President Obama said he had talked to some doctors and learned that medical procedures were being done that may not be necessary due to fear of medical malpractice lawsuits, and he entertained the idea of tort reform, saying we could try it in some states with pilot projects. But there's no need for a pilot project. Texas enacted malpractice reform years ago. The president would benefit from a phone call to Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R)....

In his speech before Congress last week, President Obama attempted to win Republican support for his health care overhaul by agreeing to consider including medical malpractice reform in his plan. In an interview that aired on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday the president shed some more light on what he meant -- and in which form he will not accept tort reform. (Read the transcript of the president's interview here.) ...

I was just watching Linda Douglass, Obama poodle, on FOX NEWS. She refused to answer whether BHO was going to promote TORT REFORM in his dog 'n pony show tonight...she merely said "Obama has talked about it a lot." blah blah blah So my question is: could Obama create "tort reform" this way: MAKE EVERY DOCTOR A DEFACTO EMPLOYEE OF THE GOVERNMENT. THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT BE SUED--SO NO LAWSUITS AGAINST DOCTORS WOULD BE PERMITTED. I know Obama and the libs are in bed with trial lawyers, so this may not happen...but it crossed my mind.

Howard Dean claims TORT reform would 'make enemies'August 28, 10:07 AM Mesa Independent Examiner Christina Wijfjes-Smit There is a new battle cry being touted in the ongoing debate of health care reform by a growing number of Americans; TORT reform. TORT reform would limit the circumstances under which injured people may sue or limit the amount a jury can award at trial, or both. Doctors are forced to spend an enormous amount of money on mal-practice insurance due to the ever growing number of frivolous law suits filed. The increase of cost to the doctor trickles down to the patient...

Sarah Palin is calling for Tort Reform to be the hallmark of any kind of health care reform: President Obama's health care "reform" plan has met with significant criticism across the country. Many Americans want change and reform in our current health care system. We recognize that while we have the greatest medical care in the world, there are major problems that we must face, especially in terms of reining in costs and allowing care to be affordable for all. However, as we have seen, current plans being pushed by the Democratic leadership represent change that may not be what...

Former Governor Palin continues her bit by bit attack on Obama's health care plan with her latest piece on his plan on Facebook. This one focuses on the need for tort reform and the lack of it in Obama's plan.

... snip ... 'Tort Tax' Raises Costs Medical malpractice liability--"the 'tort tax' on doctors and hospitals, whose costs constitute the majority of health expenses," as it is described in the report--has grown much faster than overall health care inflation, according to 2004 data from the global management corporation Tillinghast-Towers Perrin. Medical malpractice liability alone constitutes more than 10 percent of the U.S. tort tax, which by 2003 represented more than $3,300 for the average family of four, according to Tillinghast-Towers Perrin. Medical malpractice tort claims awarded by courts, as well as pretrial settlements, provide U.S. trial lawyers with their largest...

The elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about is the very high and escalating cost of malpractice insurance that every health care provider must recover if they are going to practice medicine in this country. It all starts with tort reform -- putting some limits on the liability that our providers are exposed to whenever malpractice is charged or suspected. If there were some sensible limits in place, then there would not be the pressure to practice defensive medicine. Some estimates of the cost to our system of defensive medicine range upwards of 25-30 percent of...

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" -- Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" (engraved on pedestal of Statue of Liberty) Foreign litigants suing American companies for torts committed abroad hope the golden door swings open into American courtrooms, even when the conduct and events underlying their claims occurred in far-off lands and have no effect on U.S. citizens. With increased frequency, American companies conducting operations abroad face lawsuits in American courts by...

The Federal Court of Canada has awarded $12,000 in damages to an inmate who received minor injuries when he was stabbed in the buttocks with a plastic weapon after a dispute over telephone use at an Ontario prison. Barry Carr, 38, said he suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after the 2005 attack by an unidentified prisoner at Millhaven Institution in Bath, following an argument over the use of one of the five phones that are located next to the recreation area in the prison's assessment unit. Carr received two stitches and there were superficial abrasions to his arms. All prisoners...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said Tuesday it will pay as much as $640 million to settle 63 lawsuits over wage-and-hour violations, ending years of dispute. (read more at link...excerpted AP article)

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline)-Efforts to restore fairness and balance to the nation's courts could take a step backward if Democrat Barack Obama is elected president today, tort reform advocates said Tuesday. An Obama win coupled with Democrats' likely gains in Congress would spell disaster for legal reform efforts including pushes for damage award caps, experts told Legal Newsline. James Copland, director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy, said tort reform activists have already been placed in a defensive posture.

The huge fees that Weiss and Scruggs were able to pocket stemmed from their technique of gathering very large groups of plaintiffs to sue corporations for damages. Weiss's genius was getting in the door first as lead counsel, using a ready-made stable of clients who, it turned out, were receiving kickbacks in what a federal judge described this week as a "nationwide conspiracy that continued for decades." Scruggs was also adept at enrolling long lists of plaintiffs -- whose damage claims were so sizable that corporations often settled rather than run the risk of multibillion-dollar payouts and possible bankruptcy. Scruggs's...

-- snip --In 2003 and in 2005, Texas enacted a series of reforms to the state's civil justice system. They are stunning in their success. Texas Medical Liability Trust, one of the largest malpractice insurance companies in the state, has slashed its premiums by 35%, saving doctors some $217 million over four years. There is also a competitive malpractice insurance industry in Texas, with over 30 companies competing for business. This is driving rates down...

Tort reform: a political issue that never fully succeeds in the Oklahoma Legislature, but never dies. Year after year, the Republican caucuses in the state Senate and House of Representatives announce their intent to pass a comprehensive tort reform bill during the current legislative session. And year after year, the legislative session ends with the exchange of harsh press releases between Republicans and Democrats, and the promise to fight again the following year. The debate over tort reform is so contentious, opposing groups can’t even agree on what to call the issue. “Lawsuit reform” is the term preferred by many...

HOUSTON, Oct. 4 — In Texas, it can be a long wait for a doctor: up to six months. That is not for an appointment. That is the time it can take the Texas Medical Board to process applications to practice. Four years after Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment limiting awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, doctors are responding as supporters predicted, arriving from all parts of the country to swell the ranks of specialists at Texas hospitals and bring professional health care to some long-underserved rural areas.

Latino organizations have created a network of hotlines for incidents of racial profiling. They say it's in response to Sheriff Joe Arpaio's hotline that encourages people to report information on undocumented immigrants. Leaders of the Hispanic community say their hotlines will ensure the preservation of civil and constitutional rights and again called for Arpaio's hotline to be taken down. The four hotline numbers staffed by Hispanic advocacy groups will be activated Monday. When a call is received through the hotlines, lawyers on a volunteer basis will review the claims to see whether they are valid. If they are deemed valid,...

A Jacksonville mother filed suit Monday against Orange Park Medical Center after she developed complications during pregnancy that left her permanently disabled. Natasha Meeks said her health problems started during the first trimester of her third pregnancy with frequent bouts of severe vomiting. She was hospitalized Jan. 12, 2006, after her condition showed no signs of improvement. Doctors at Orange Park Medical Center treated her for malnutrition, but it was later discovered she was suffering from far more than the aftereffects of vomiting. She said she first knew something was out of the ordinary when she went to a bathroom...

When attorney Roy Pearson filed suit demanding $67 million from the Chung family, whose Washington dry cleaners had mishandled his pair of trousers, he must have felt he was sitting pretty. Menacing a merchant who's annoyed you with terrifyingly high legal penalties--that's the way to show who wears the pants, right? Mr. Pearson probably had no idea that his Great American Pants Suit--the trial of which just wound up in a Washington courtroom last week, with a verdict expected this week--would stir commentary around the world and come to symbolize the extent to which lawsuits in America can serve as...

Independent tests by ConsumerLab.com revealed that of 21 brands of multivitamins on the market in the US and Canada, only 10 met the stated claims on their labels or satisfied other quality standards.Of particular interest to dog owners: Pet-Tabs vitamins for dogs (made by Pfizer) were found to be contaminated with 1.4 micrograms of lead per tablet.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a $79.5 million (40.7 million pound) punitive damages award won by the widow of a longtime smoker against Philip Morris. By a 5-4 vote, the high court ruled the huge damages award was unconstitutional because it was intended to punish the tobacco company for harming not just the plaintiff but other smokers as well. The court ruled that the company, a unit of Altria Group Inc., could not be punished for harm to other smokers in a case involving Mayola Williams, an Oregon woman whose husband died of...

WASHINGTON - Milberg Weiss is particularly active in New York. Melvyn Weiss was a guest at a glittering 2003 Manhattan fundraiser for then-New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer that raised more than $2 million for his gubernatorial bid. Following the Milberg Weiss indictment in May, Spitzer returned $124,000 in donations from the firm and related individuals. The donations flap was barely noticed and did nothing to dent gubernatorial candidate Spitzer’s image of unsullied rectitude. A Spitzer Web site notes that he was named “Crusader of the Year” by Time magazine and the “Sheriff of Wall Street” by 60 Minutes....

WASHINGTON - In some legal and government circles the case of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman is shaping up as the trial of the century. In May, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted the king of class-action law firms in an alleged conspiracy scheme of staggering proportions. The 20-count indictment included charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, bribery and fraud. The government claims that the firm itself, as well as senior partners David Bershad and Steven Schulman, participated in a decades-long conspiracy that distributed more than $11 million in “secret kickback payments” to people to serve as plaintiffs...

Scalding hot coffee that wound up in someone's lap cost McDonald's $480,000, but a somewhat similar mishap is not worth a dime in the New York Court of Claims, or so says Judge James J. Lack. Judge Lack recently dismissed a case in which a woman visiting her sister at a state hospital was burned when a wheel mysteriously fell off a rolling cart and the hot coffee she had placed there spilled in her lap. The judge, applying a res ipsa loquitur analysis, said the event was clearly of the sort that would not normally occur absent someone's negligence,...

Michael Teixiera took one for the team. He lost his personal injury case against the New Britain Baseball Club, Inc., after he was struck in the testicles by an errant ball. But if Connecticut continues to follow the "limited duty rule" applied by New Britain Superior Court Judge Dan Shaban, the traditional proximity of ballplayers and spectators can be preserved. ADVERTISEMENT "[O]ne of the great lures of the game that still remains to bring spectators to the park, young and old alike, is the anticipation and hope that by the end of the game they will leave with a souvenir...

What would you do if a lawyer threatened, "Give me a million dollars or my client and I will publicly brand you as a rapist and destroy your life?" On July 27, the California Supreme Court expanded the range of choices possible to one man who was presented with that threat.

At long last, there's good news in the fight against "jackpot justice" tort claims and the nefarious law firms that file them. In courts and legislatures across the country, fraudulent lawsuits are being exposed, and the abusive tort lawyers that file them are finally getting a taste of their own medicine. Most notable is the recent indictment of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, the nation's most notorious class-action law firm. For four decades, Milberg Weiss has filed hundreds of dubious class-action lawsuits and wrung billions of dollars from terrified companies. Now, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles has indicted...

About 40 percent of the medical malpractice cases filed in the United States are groundless, according to a Harvard analysis of the hotly debated issue that pits trial lawyers against doctors, with lawmakers in the middle. Many of the lawsuits analyzed contained no evidence that a medical error was committed or that the patient suffered any injury, the researchers reported. The vast majority of those dubious cases were dismissed with no payout to the patient. However, groundless lawsuits still accounted for 15 percent of the money paid out in settlements or verdicts. The study's lead researcher, David Studdert of the...

$6.5 million awarded in job bias verdict Jury grants judgment to Sonoma County employee suffering from panic disorder By LORI A. CARTER THE PRESS DEMOCRAT In what may be the largest civil judgment in Sonoma County history, a jury awarded a county employee with fear of crowds $6.5 million in damages in an employment discrimination lawsuit. After a five-week Superior Court trial, the six-woman, six-man panel awarded $1.5 million in lost wages and $5 million in pain-and-suffering and other noneconomic damages to George Alberigi of Forestville. Alberigi, 52, a Medi-Cal eligibility case worker for Sonoma County's Human Services Department, argued...

RP man injured in crash sues Air France Individual lawsuit possible under 1999 treaty; landing called unsafe By MARY CALLAHAN THE PRESS DEMOCRAT Naim Ayat's back and neck still ache from the afternoon last summer when his flight skidded off a Toronto runway in a raging thunderstorm. All 309 people aboard survived and Ayat, a retired auto dealer from Rohnert Park, said he helped about 100 people escape before he went down an emergency chute. He choked up when he recalled women and children crying, screaming, practically clawing to get out of the burning jetliner. "I don't see this case...

Merck & Co. Inc. is seeking to sever the cases of two plaintiffs that a judge plans to try together in the Vioxx trial set to begin Monday in Atlantic City. While both plaintiffs allege to have suffered heart attacks after taking the drug for more than two years before, the drug maker argues that the facts, witness testimony and scientific and marketing evidence presented by each would confuse jurors to Merck's disadvantage. Merck's lawyers say the "threshold difference ... has to do with the length of each man's Vioxx usage." They argue that plaintiff Thomas Cona's pharmaceutical records show...

Lawyer claims some web fans get their kicks leering at Ms. Hicks FEBRUARY 22--Claiming that Internet surfers have been using her mug shot for "private sexual gratification," a convicted drug dealer is threatening to sue The Smoking Gun unless her booking photo is removed from our site. So meet Casey Hicks. Again. It's been a few years since we've thought about the comely 25-year-old Floridian, whose photo first appeared on TSG in 2002 as part of a collection of mug shots that we dubbed "Foxy Felons."

In a huge victory for pharmaceutical giant Wyeth, a Florida appeals court on Wednesday halted a class action suit that claimed its hormone replacement drug could harm hundreds of thousands of Florida women. A three-judge panel of the state's 3rd District Court of Appeal unanimously held in Wyeth Inc. v. Arlene Gottlieb that the claims were not common enough for the case to move forward as a class action. Instead, women who claim they may suffer future health problems because of their use of the drug Prempro will have to file individual suits against Wyeth. The Wyeth decision reverses a...

Mike Marlowe fully admits that he sometimes gave George Gillespie a hard time in that AOL chatroom. But never in his wildest imagination did he expect to be sued in court for what he characterized as "razzing." "We gave him crap," said Marlowe, a 33-year-old welder in Fayette, Ala. "I'm not going to deny it. I teased him and he teased me back. He gave it back better than he ever got it." A generation ago, such petty personal beefs might have been settled with fists outside the corner bar, but now it's the Internet age — and Ohio resident...

Some lawyers say fast food is dangerous. It can make you fat. I say some lawyers are dangerous. They can make you poor and take away your choices. But special privileges for favored industries, such as the bill the House recently passed to protect the fast-food industry, are the wrong cure.I like fast food. It tastes good, it's cheap, and it's, well, fast. That's why McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, KFC and Taco Bell are so popular. People aren't endlessly stupid, so companies serving nearly 100 million people every day must be serving their customers well.Of course, eating too much fast...

WASHINGTON -- The cellphone industry failed to stop proceedings in several state class actions over whether radiation emitted by the devices harms users. The Supreme Court rejected appeals from several wireless companies without comment, letting stand a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision allowing five state-level class actions to proceed. The suits name several cellphone makers, including Nokia Inc., Philips Electronics North America Corp., a unit of Philips Electronics NV, Qualcomm Inc., AT&T Corp., Motorola Inc. and others. The circuit court reversed a federal trial judge in Baltimore and allowed consumers to sue the companies under Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, New...

Retired Towanda, N.Y., Police Captain Peter Christ recently told members of the Concordville-Chadds Ford Rotary Club that the war on drugs wasn't working and that the prohibition on drugs should end. He has a point about the war on drugs, but instead of a blanket end to their restriction, how about we make their possession? Then we should add one more wrinkle. Now, regular readers will know I'm not a big fan of the trial lawyers, but I'll throw them a bone here. We allow users to sue the distributor -- and by distributors I don't merely mean sellers but...

<p>FOR the lawyers who file lawsuits against corporations, it looked like the next big thing — the next fen-phen, asbestos or even tobacco, the mother of all jackpots.</p> <p>Like the lawsuits involving asbestos, the fire-retardant material that when inhaled can cause a horrible lung cancer, the new suits involved a substance that under certain circumstances could harm the lungs: silica, a purified sand used as a cleaning abrasive as well as in making glass, paint, ceramics and other materials. Silica dust, when inhaled, can lodge in the lungs, causing silicosis, a disabling and often fatal lung disease.</p>

A congressional committee has asked more than a dozen doctors and screening companies to turn over information regarding their involvement in hundreds of silicosis lawsuits that are at the center of court proceedings in U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack's Corpus Christi courtroom. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, Ky., chairman of the oversight and investigations subcommittee, sent letters to 12 doctors last week asking them to explain how a diagnosis of silicosis is made, the number of people they have diagnosed with the disease and the number of...

U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack issued a stinging rebuke of doctors and plaintiff lawyers involved in a massive set of silicosis lawsuits, a move that could send re-verberations throughout the nation in other tort class actions. In a 249-page ruling made public Friday, Jack determined the plaintiffs' attorneys and the doctors involved in diagnosing about 10,000 potentially sick workers hatched a scheme aimed at making money and had no interest in protecting their clients. "These diagnoses were about litigation rather than healthcare," she wrote. "It is apparent that truth and justice had very little to do with these diagnoses...

Decision Over Faulty Casket Upsets Son "HAWESVILLE, Ky. - Sherrol Sweeney has been dead and buried in the city cemetery at Lewisport, Ky., for nearly four years, but his son, Alan, is still troubled by his father's funeral. On Aug. 31, 2001, the funeral director and pallbearers were removing his father's casket when something went wrong. Pulling the wooden casket from the hearse, the bottom of the coffin came loose, allowing the departed's torso to drop down. The casket was not entirely out of the hearse. If it hadn't been for that fact, the son said, the father's body would...

MEMPHIS, TN - A Tennessee jury has awarded punitive damages of more than $48 million to the family of two Tennessee women killed in a 2002 crash near Corning, Arkansas. The woman was driving a Dodge Caravan, and her family sued the DaimlerChrysler Corporation, which made the vehicle. The judgement came in the second phase of a trial in which the family of Vickie Mohr and her mother, Maurine Heathscott, claimed the vehicle was unreasonably dangerous. The 38-year-old Mohr, of Cedar Grove, Tennessee, and 76-year-old Heathscott, of Lexington, Tennessee, were killed in a three-vehicle accident on July 5, 2002. The...

The Tyranny of Tort Reform by Yakov Bok 7 March 2005 On February 18, 2005, George Bush helped further erode our federal government by signing into law The Class-Action Fairness Act of 2005. My understanding of the bill is this: previously, if a company with lots of money gets sued, for example in a products liability case, by plaintiffs from many different states, the plaintiffs can choose which jurisdiction to sue in. The plaintiffs of course, would choose the venue they thought would be most favorable by finding the company liable and rewarding them with a large amount of money....

For Immediate Release > February 18, 2005 > Contact: Joseph Agostini > (850) 222-7920 > > BILL NELSON = JUST ANOTHER > OUT-OF-THE-MAINSTREAM LIBERAL > > *Democrat Florida Senator Joins Liberal Senate Colleagues > Clinton, Kennedy, Kerry, Boxer in opposing Tort Reform* > > TALLAHASSEE, FL - Republican Party of Florida Chairman Carole Jean > Jordan issued the following statement regarding Florida Senator Bill > Nelson's vote against tort reform: > > "Today, President Bush signed the landmark Class-Action Fairness Act of > 2005 into law and by this act, took a critical step towards ending the > lawsuit culture...

Bush Signs Bill Curbing Class-Action Suits By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - President Bush on Friday signed a bill that he says will curtail multimillion-dollar class action lawsuits against companies and "marks a critical step toward ending the lawsuit culture in our country." The legislation aims to discourage multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuits by having federal judges take them away from state courts, a victory for conservatives who hope it will lead to other lawsuit limits. The president has described class-action suits as often frivolous, and businesses complain that state judges and juries have been too generous to plaintiffs....