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Tell you what Travis.
I was going to just flat out respond to this, but how about you give me examples of specific cases that you feel support the need for lawsuit reform and we'll go from there.
Jenn, everyone is praying for your niece. I hope that she is getting better.This is so sad and on a very related note... I would like to ask for some special prayers for my two year old niece. She was originally misdiagnosed with the flu and when they took her back to the hospital a week later they discovered that she had a severe case of pneumonia and she has been in the hospital ICU for 2 weeks now. As of yesterday, her condition has worsened and she has stopped breathing on her own, so everyone please please pray for her. Her name is Brianna. Thank you!!!
Tell you what Travis.
I was going to just flat out respond to this, but how about you give me examples of specific cases that you feel support the need for lawsuit reform and we'll go from there.
Man its times like these I love the Australian health care system
OK, how about this, jerk?
1. Asbestos/silica exposure cases. Thousands of fraudulent filings.
From an October 3, 2004 Houston Chronicle article:
2. Class action lawsuit abuse. This one is aided and abetted by activist judges. One case in particular is described in the Wall Street Journal from June 29, 2004. Three women managed to get their flimsy discrimination lawsuits elevated to class-action status by a sympathetic judge who obviously is looking at nothing other than putting his name in the books.Many legal analysts challenge the efficiency, if not the common sense, of paying people for damage that has not fully materialized.
But some go further, questioning the legitimacy of the claims in the first place. They insist the plaintiff rolls are padded by untold thousands of people who have no real clinical evidence of exposure to asbestos.
"The majority of evidence is bogus," said Lester Brickman, a law professor and asbestos expert at Yeshiva University's Benjamin Cardozo Law School.
"It's a scam. It's the biggest scam in the history of the universe. There's nothing bigger, never was."
Brickman's opinion is supported in part by a recent study in the professional journal Academic Radiology in which researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore asked six independent reviewers to re-examine 492 X-rays submitted by plaintiff lawyers to support their clients' claims of lung scarring. The initial X-ray readers had reported lung abnormalities in 95.9 percent of the films. The independent reviewers found them in 4.5 percent.
"My bottom line is the overwhelming majority of claims are being brought on behalf of people who have no asbestos illness as recognized by medical science," Brickman said.
Plaintiff lawyers say defendants are free to challenge any plaintiff's test results in court.
"I think there are many procedural safeguards for the defendant in the tort system to get rid of claims that he feels have no merit," Budd said.
But that's easier said than done when confronted with 30,000 lawsuits and 30,000 individual tests. Increasingly, companies tired of litigation are looking to the nearest exit — bankruptcy.
And the lawyers? They love class-action suits. All kinds of "plaintiffs" to dilute the payout, while giving them opportunities for billable hours to hang onto the "settlement". See, for example, a USA TODAY article from April 7, 2004.
3. Medical malpractice abuse. At least Texas has made some inroads into this area, with caps on non-economic damages. California (no good example for most things, but at least they got this part right) has had such legislation since 1975. Other states aren't so lucky. In Minnesota, for example, insurance companies that cover ER and other specialists are leaving the state. Why? Because in a malpractice suit, they are the ones to get hit. And with no insurance available, those doctors will leave the state. See the op-ed article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, March 9, 2005 for an explanation.Frequently, however, judges in cases ranging from unsafe trucks to fee-gouging banks approve deals that lack provisions to ensure injured consumers receive fair payments.
That's what happened in the phone settlement. The lawsuit charged that millions of customers nationwide were misled into paying AT&T and Lucent rental fees for phones that had been free of charge. The companies agreed to set up a $300 million fund, from which injured customers could apply to collect up to $80 per leased phone.
While the lawyers quickly got their $80-million cut, consumers didn't collect as easily. Settlement notices appeared in newspapers nationwide last year, but claim forms weren't attached. People had to call, write or go to a Web site to get one and file within a few months. And making payments was the responsibility of the companies, which had no interest in encouraging claims because they would recover any unclaimed money.
Recently, some judges have tried to ensure that claims are paid diligently by linking lawyers' fees to the money consumers actually collect.
Now I'm no great fan of the insurance business either, but they are positively angelic compared to aggressive lawyers looking for the big payoff.For example, in 2003 the emergency physicians at Abbott Northwestern Hospital found no offers in the primary medical liability market, and four days prior to the end of the year obtained temporary coverage through the Minnesota Joint Underwriters Association.
In the past year, a number of emergency physician groups have been told they will have no liability insurance. Two groups were only able to obtain insurance at the last possible moment. One group had to form an offshore captive to self-insure themselves because they could not obtain coverage. Two more groups had to sign a contract with another offshore captive.
No liability insurance means these ERs would have to close, which means there is no one to take care of strokes, heart attacks, or other acute illnesses or injuries.
Lawyers are supposed to be defending the "common man". More often than not, however, the "common man" is themselves.
Last edited by travis2; 03-16-2005 at 08:27 AM.
Thanks everyone, last night she took a turn for the worse (her vitals dropped in less than a minute) but they have her fairly stabilized right now. They are waiting for a spot to open up at a hospital in Houston or Dallas. I just pray that the remaining "good" part of her lung (one of them is completely useless right now) holds up and hopefully the damaged portions also start to heal soon.
Manny, you need to come with me to some of my CE classes and you will get some prime examples of the need for lawsuit reform. You would be blown away by the outrageous things that people have sued over and won millions of dollars from. You wonder why insurance is so expensive just take a look at your phone book. Those big glossy ads that lawyers have aren't by any means cheap.
There are some cases where a lawsuit is warranted and from what I understand, those won't be hindered.
The Asbestos cases: If the lawsuits aren't legit, they should be weeded out to begin with. If there isn't enough evidence to support the claim, they should never win.
So, why is new legislation needed to stop a problem that shouldn't be occuring with current legislation?
From yesterday's Chronicle...
You know, to be quite honest, this is some lawsuit reform I could go for because of it's specificity in nature. Except for one ing thing. The politicians love to protect their insurance and business lobbys, but their cons uants concerns! Look at those idiotic provisions in that bill.House Bill 8, filed by Rep. Joe Nixon, R-Houston, would take care of business' concerns by vastly reducing the number of people who could sue, including many who are already sick from asbestos-related illnesses. It overreaches in disqualifying, retroactively, Texans who at long last are about to have their day in court. Perhaps most troubling, the bill would limit the doctors a patient could consult regarding diagnosis of asbestos-related disease.
Some proponents of lawsuit reform want to bar smokers from gaining damages for asbestos illness. However, this seemingly reasonable proposal is unsound because smoking and asbestos produce distinctly different symptoms and disease.
2. Class Action Lawsuits. And now off the fairy world where robin hood steals from the rich to give to the poor, and activist judges fly around granting everyone's wish.
This is my favorite!
The funny thing is what you posted there isn't about lawsuit reform, it's about settlemnent reform. If you want to pass laws saying that this is how settlements must be paid, that's one thing, but it's not tort reform.
Also, provide specific examples of cases that are not valid. You talk about 3 women and the Wall Street Journal but give me at least enough to google! The vast number of class action suits are more than valid, and serve an important function of holding companies accountable.
Except when they have big bad powerful lobbies though right?
Oh, and it's ok for business to use capitalism to drive it, but not law?
3. Insurance companies are now angelic?As someone who used to sell health insurance, I call severe bull .
I'll just leave you with this:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10709For its part, the National Bureau of Economic Research, a not-for-profit, nonpartisan think tank, found that malpractice payments don't seem to be the driving force behind recent increases in consumer premiums. The study also found that that increases in physicians' malpractice costs don't seem to decrease the physician workforce, although they may push out some doctors and lower the number of doctors practicing in rural areas.
Last week, a study by four law professors of Texas data cast doubt on the link between medical malpractice lawsuits and soaring medical malpractice insurance rates.
The study looked at Texas Department of Insurance records dating to 1988 and found claims that medical costs rose because of malpractice suits unsubstantiated by the data.
Reviewing 15 years of statistics on all closed insurance claims in Texas, the study found that — adjusted for inflation and population — the number of large paid claims (more than $25,000 in 1988 dollars), average payouts per large claim and total annual payouts on large paid claims remained flat.
Only defense costs per large claim increased significantly — by 4.4 percent a year, adjusted for inflation —producing a 1 percent increase in total costs to insurers per large paid claim.
“We find no evidence of the medical malpractice crisis that produced headlines over the last several years and led to legal reform in Texas and other states,” the study concluded.
The study was conducted by law professors at the University of Texas, University of Illinois and Columbia University law schools.
-------------
The GAO stated that multiple factors, including insurers' losses (the cash payouts insurers make in a given year), declines in investment income, a less compe ive climate and climbing reinsurance rates had contributed to increases in malpractice premiums.
While acknowledging that increased losses “appeared to be the greatest contributor to premium rate increases,” it said that the lack of comprehensive data at the national and state levels prevented it from analyzing the nature and causes of those losses.
The NAIC, an organization of the nation's chief insurance regulators, said it agreed with the GAO's conclusions and likewise stated that there was insufficient data to determine what was driving the cost of coverage to health care providers.Travis, insurance companies don't make money off of premiums. They make money off of investing those premiums. When that's not able to happen because of lower interest rates, guess what goes up? Thats right, premiums.
Texas Study Casts Doubt on Need for Tort Reform
Thu Mar 10, 2005 01:59 AM ET
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HOUSTON (Reuters) - A study released on Thursday cast doubt on whether recent "tort reform" in Texas that limited payouts in medical malpractice lawsuits and is similar to what President Bush wants nationally was really needed.
The study looked at Texas Department of Insurance records dating back to 1988 and found claims that medical costs were soaring because of too many malpractice lawsuits, the supposed reason for the reform, were not true.
"We find no evidence of the medical malpractice crisis that produced headlines over the last several years and led to legal reform in Texas and other states," said the study, conducted by law professors at the University of Texas, University of Illinois and Columbia University law schools.
Only a few states have comprehensive insurance databases like that of Texas, said David Hyman, one of the study authors, but similar studies elsewhere have found nothing to indicate a link between litigation and rising medical costs.
"Everyone who is collecting data is finding more or less the same thing -- there is no evidence of a tort crisis," he told Reuters.
"The clear implication is that 'runaway medical malpractice litigation' makes a poor poster child for the cause of tort reform," said the study, which was released at the Texas law school in Austin.
In 2003, in response to the alleged litigation crisis, Texas passed a law placing a $250,000 cap on certain damages in medical malpractice lawsuits.
But the study found that insurance payouts, jury awards in malpractice lawsuits and costs of legal defense had changed little between 1988 and 2002
The only thing that jumped, they said, was the cost of malpractice insurance, which rose 135 percent from 1999 to 2003 likely because of financial pressures that had nothing to do with litigation.
Bush, who backed tort reform when he was governor of Texas, is now calling for a federal law imposing the same $250,000 cap in malpractice lawsuits.
Without a cap "excessive jury awards will continue to drive up insurance costs," he said in a recent speech.
Jane, you have my well wishes, first of all.
Secondly, I need specific examples, because in almost every case that there is a huge payout, there is a reason for it.
For example, the Mcdonalds coffee case that everyone loves to cite, there are reasons that ruling came down that are never discussed.
Also, many examples that papers and even politicians cite are urban legend! Many of these supposed insane payouts, never even happend.
So, I'm just looking for specific, and real, examples.
You must have a lawyer brother or something...
I love how you decry the whole capitalist system, the exploitation of workers, etc...but you don't seem to mind lawyers getting rich off of the backs of their clients.
Oh, and guess what, Manny...lawyers are the largest lobby there is. Deal with that.
And WTF do you mean "give me enough to google"? I gave you the ing DATE for crying out loud.
Also, if you are going to make blanket statements like "the vast number of class action suits are more than valid", then you'd better back that statement up. Especially since you've ripped people for that very failing.
Explain to me why there should be no caps on non-economic damages. Provide a method whereby an objective assessment of monetary punishment could be established.
Oh, and by the way...I guess you don't consider the downturn in certain specialties or in rural medicine bad things...
Jenn...sending get well vibes to your niece.
Hope your niece gets well soon SJ!!!!
You think they'll make a third "meet the faulkers, parents"?
Since lawsuit reform was brought up in this thread...
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$1m award for diving accident
18-03-2005
From: AAP
A MAN who became a paraplegic at 14 when he dived off a road bridge into a New South Wales river was awarded more than $1 million in damages today.
Philip Dederer, now 20, sued the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) and the Great Lakes Shire Council in the NSW Supreme Court after he was paralysed in a diving accident off the Forster/Tuncurry Bridge into the Wallamba River on December 31, 1998.
Mr Dederer, from Newcastle, claimed the RTA and the council were negligent despite there being signs prohibiting diving, because the signs did not say diving was dangerous.
Justice John Dunford agreed and today awarded Mr Dederer $1,050,000 in damages.
He ruled the RTA was 80 per cent responsible for the accident and should pay $840,000, while the council was liable for 20 per cent of the damages to a total of $210,000.
The judge ruled the signs erected were inadequate because young people continued to dive from the bridge.
"I am satisfied that the signs were not effective in the sense that large numbers of young people continued to dive, do somersaults, etc from the bridge," he said.
But he ruled Mr Dederer was partially responsible for his injuries and therefore reduced his original $1.4 million payout by 25 per cent.
Outside court, Mr Dederer said he was relieved with the result but was concerned teenagers and children were still diving off the same bridge and the signs had not been changed.
"I wouldn't like to see another person get into the same position as I did," he said.
Judge Dunford ruled the RTA pay 80 per cent and the council 20 per cent of Mr Dederer's costs.
i feel sorry for that man, i couldn't and wouldn't want to imagine being paralyzed, but i always look in the mirror first when assessing blame. if he is truly concerned about teenager diving, maybe he can use some of his settlement to rectify the situation....i.e. more signs, a fence, whatever....
Or maybe he can just not jump of a freakin bridge!!! I have read up on the McDonalds coffe lawsuit. I think that the money was probably justified. I also believe that we do need lawsuit reform.
And SJ, best wishes to you niece!
The coffee lawsuit was extremely justified considering the previous rulings in that line of cases. Most people don't know about the previous cases.
I'll post more when I leave work, I had forgotten about this thread.
SJ, how is your niece doing?
I'm sorry Jane. My prayers are with your niece.
I just talked to my brother and he seemed alot more optimistic. She is showing signs of improvements and they are thinking that she might not have to make the trip to Houston as long as she keeps improving here. She's been stable for the past 2 days so that is a miracle. Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes!
awesome!
Good to hear your niece is doing better!
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