Nationally, defendants prevail in nearly 80 percent of the medical malpractice cases that go to trial.
Wouldn't that seem to suggest that far too many frivolous lawsuits are making it to court?
Experimental lab rat gets my vote.
Come on everyone who is reading this message..please please give money to this low life attorney so that he won't have to lay off one of his two live-in chefs..don't forget all that these scumbags contribute to our lives..higher insurance rates..less access to affordable medicine..oh I could go on..but you get my drift..even if you don't contribute..you already have..thank you..
If this bill doesn't put paid to the trial lawyers, we can always go for another bill a little further down the line. Take away a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money.
There ought to be some sort of disclosure of conflict of interest by the Times. The writer mentions, at the very bottom of the article, that this sleazebag gave $100,000 in campaign donations in the last election, all to Democrats. Trial lawyers are the largest single donor group to Democrats nationwide. For that reason, Pinch Sulzberger and the NY Times would be devastated if these folks lost any of their income, because it would cut into Democrat campaign contributions. For that reason, too, they do not consider that these ultra-rich lawyers belong to the group commonly denominated as capitalist pigs.
ping
The whole article is WAY TOO EASY on crooked lawyers. They find ways past the caps on % mentioned and routinely try to get outrageous judgements out of moron juries that they purposely select. I was on a jury in California where it was obvious that not only was the plaintiff not injured on the defendants property, it was also obvious that he was injured in a drug-related motorcycle accident. In fact, the plaintiff and his windbag lawyer presented no hard evidence whatsoever, just histrionics and tears. Had it not been for a few IQs above room temp on the jury the lawyer and his scumbag client would have ripped off a family business for $2.5M in an absolute SCAM. When you see the legal system up close you understand how sick it really is.
Divide and conquer.
This and conservative courts would be a huge victory for the good guys.
This article fails to make an easy point.
If damages are capped then lawsuits that have no chance of winning will not go to trial.
And...
Those supposed costs for research are bound to go down. Those people are getting paid a serious amount of money because there is plenty of work for them.
If there is less work obviously costs will go down in order to make the venture profitable.
If these so called experts want to get paid for any testimony at all they will be forced to lower their costs... if not they make nothing.
Oooh, this is going to be fun!
bflr
Me, too, I make a 7 figure income. Unlike Lawyer Smith, however, I have a decimal point somewhere in those figures.
Don't we just love the way the outrageous "pain and suffering" awards are lumped in with the actual damage awards? Whenever I read about lawyers, I get the strong impression that real justice is irrelevant to them--it's all about putting on the best show and winning the case. I could never be so dishonest.
One has to wonder how that will affect the attorney's votes in 2008. There are a large wealthy lobby.
I'd prefer the IRS first, but ok. I'll take this.
How about this. Medical providers will have 2 prices. Price number 1 is what you pay if you waive your rights to sue. Price number 2 is what you pay if you keep your rights to sue. Plus, you can also opt for price numer 1 and buy "bad outcome insurance" (basically no fault insurance), which pays regardless of fault but only on a bad outcome with the price of insurance based on payout selected.
I would always take option 1. The few times I've been the the hospital, they tested me for all kinds of crap that I could possibly have but almost certainly did not. It was a was of money and a waste of my time.
I do think this would reduce costs, compensate victims, and put every medical trial lawyer in the country out of work.
However, Bush's reforms will not easily repair the massive damage done by the Trial Lawyer Industry to our nation's emergency rooms and trauma care centers.
Bush is going to the Toons' political bag of tricks with this-- it's called voter suppression. Just as toon's first political act was to broaden federal abortion coverage in order to attempt to discourage and demoralize the religious right, "our representatives can't even prevent this from happening to us, " so Bush attempts to school the Dems and their core support.
Cry me a river. For every sob story the trial lawyers want to bring up, there are probably 100s of cases where doctors and nurses are harassed into paying exhorbitant fees just to fend off some frivolous case.
The trial lawyers have practically made the OB/GYN practice extinct.
We need to bring common sense back into this and the first step is to let doctors be doctors instead of pinatas for trail lawyers.