Prescient Pick- (Edwards)

[liveoaktx]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5405043/site/newsweek

Seeing Edwards out there is a reminder of why he won a lot of votes in the primaries, and why Republicans have feared the smooth-talking lawyer ever since he won his Senate seat in North Carolina six years ago.The GOP reserves a special place in hell for trial attorneys who champion the little guy at the expense of the big corporations and get wealthy in the process. Edwards’s speech on the “Two Americas” is populism with a smile. He’s the rare Democrat whose class-warfare rhetoric wins the approval of the Democratic Leadership Council, the party’s moderate wing, while still energizing the party’s base of liberals.
The Senate by coincidence this week debated legislation to limit civil-action suits, which is how Edwards got rich. It’s one of the classic battles between the political parties, pitting the evil plutocrats in the corporate world against personal-injury attorneys, dubbed “ambulance chasers” by their detractors. The issue is more complicated than the GOP portrayals of greedy lawyers bringing frivolous lawsuits, which is why it’s unlikely to hurt Edwards. People don't like lawyers carting away huge fees, but most people can identify with the people who are suing. There’s a reason why Court TV is so popular; the stories are poignant.


Anybody who has read a John Grisham novel knows that trial lawyers are often the only recourse ordinary people have in much of the country to right corporate wrongs. With the diminished power of the labor movement, no other institution serves as a counterpoint to corporate power. Attorneys get rich, yes, but Republicans don’t begrudge it when businessmen get rich. What Republicans hate about trial lawyers is that they give money to Democrats, lots of it. Tort reform worked for Bush in Texas, and the GOP-controlled Congress periodically brings up the issue as a sop to its business constituency. “This is base time,” says a Republican Senate staffer. Next week the Senate debates a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which won’t pass.

The bill to limit class-action law suits didn’t last through the week. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the de facto top cop on corporate accountability, weighed in along with a dozen other state A.G.s to oppose the legislation as a threat to consumer rights. The so-called Class Action Fairness Act would prevent class-action suits in state courts against out-of-state manufacturers. Getting a case certified for federal court is very difficult, and the practical result would be to greatly reduce the number of lawsuits. For example, a class-action case last year against Philip Morris USA in Illinois for consumer fraud brought by smokers in the state would not have gone forward if this bill had been law because the company is not based in Illinois. That case resulted in a $7 billion judgment, the amount Philip Morris made over 30 years of misleading Illinois smokers into believing Marlboro Lites contained less tar and nicotine when in fact they were actually more lethal.

[AP]

1. The GOP controls heaven now?

"The GOP reserves a special place in hell for trial attorneys who champion the little guy at the expense of the big corporations and get wealthy in the process."

That's a weird sentence.

[sandraj]

2. An excellent point:

"Anybody who has read a John Grisham novel knows that trial lawyers are often the only recourse ordinary people have in much of the country to right corporate wrongs. With the diminished power of the labor movement, no other institution serves as a counterpoint to corporate power. Attorneys get rich, yes, but Republicans don’t begrudge it when businessmen get rich."

Great counterpoint to the GOP's attempted slam of Edwards as that evil "friend to trial lawyers."

[NC_Nurse]

3. This morning there was a paid program on here that had doctors

on talking about how many are leaving the profession because of ridiculously high malpractice insurance rates (esp. obstetrics). They made the point that trial lawyers often get millions off of cases when it wasn't them who suffered.

They also had all these rural NC wmone on talking about how you have to travel 90 minutes to get an emergency c-section in their area. It was pretty compelling.

Of course, I can see a few flaws in the logic, but I wonder how many others would. It was sort of like an infomercial - no down side to tort reform. They played on people's fears about not being able to see a doctor when they need one...

They also brought up John Edwards as an example of lawyers who have gotten rich off of malpractice suits....

I wonder how many of these types of things are being aired all over the country.

I wonder if there are any statistics shgowing what the insurance companies make off of malpractice insurance and whether the rates really need to be this high; or whether they use these few highly publicized cases to justify gouging docs when most will never be sued.

[bain_sidhe]

4. Ask and ye shall receive... info on Ins. Co. re Malpractice premiums

From a letter by a coalition of groups opposing HR 4280:

... taking compensation away from victims of medical malpractice will do nothing to help the uninsured and underinsured get medical care. What is more, the legislation will not even help doctors obtain affordable malpractice insurance.

If Congress enacts limits on the legal rights of patients, the biggest winner will be the property and casualty insurance industry, which has already seen its profits go up almost 1000 percent in 2003. The losers will be innocent victims with devastating injuries due to medical negligence. Here are the facts:

Insurers have refused to lower malpractice insurance premiums after caps and other “tort reforms” have been enacted. To the contrary, states that have enacted legal restrictions have seen their insurance rates continue to shoot up, even after passing severe liability limits (e.g., Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Missouri and Texas).

The property/casualty industry's profits rose 997% in 2003! The industry made $29.9 billion in profits last year, almost ten times the $3 billion they made in 2002. (AM Best Statistical Report, Advanced Financial Results, Property Casualty Writers 2003, April 12, 2004; Insurance Services Office & Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, "Sharp Increase in P/C Industry's Net Income Propels Surplus Upward in 2003," April 14, 2004).

The insurance industry’s “return on equity in 2004 is likely to soar above double digits for the first time since 1997.” (Insurance Information Institute, “Groundhog Forecast for 2004.”)

Lawsuits are not limiting access to health care. In August, 2003, after an extensive investigation, the U.S. General Accounting Office found that it could not substantiate claims of doctors’ groups that malpractice insurance problems have limited access to health care. In many cases, the GAO found the claims that doctors had left their practices or their states because of high malpractice premiums to be wrong.

Medical malpractice costs are a tiny percentage of overall health care expenditures - under 1 percent according to the GAO and the Congressional Budget Office.

Medical malpractice lawsuit filings are dropping, according to the National Centerfor State Courts.

Very simply, legislation to place limits on medical malpractice liability hurts patients by restricting their rights to hold physicians, hospitals, insurance companies, HMOs, and drug and medical device manufacturers accountable for injuries or death resulting from negligent care. The bill will do nothing to make healthcare or medical malpractice insurance more available or more affordable.

More at http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/medmal/articles.cfm?ID=11610

This is also a good overview, although somewhat dated:

http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/tort/myths/articles.cfm?ID=5671

Department of Justice Study Disproves Tort "Reform" Myths

A report recently released by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics deflates many of the myths that so-called "tort reformers" use to condemn our civil justice system. The August 2000 report, "Tort Trials and Verdicts in Large Counties, 1996," is the third in a series of reports based on a survey of the 75 largest counties in the United States. Report highlights include the following:

Tort "Reform" Myth: Punitive damages are awarded too often and are too high, resulting in a plaintiff’s lottery tort system.

Study Says: Wrong! Punitive damages are very rare, and when awarded they are small.

<snip>

Tort "Reform" Myth: Damage awards are escalating out of control.

Study Says: Wrong! The amounts awarded to plaintiffs for economic, non-economic, and punitive damages are decreasing dramatically.

<snip>

Tort "Reform" Myth: Juries get caught up in the emotion of a trial, ignore the law and find for sympathetic plaintiffs.

Study Says: Wrong! The "Runaway Jury" theory is a myth. Judges are more likely than juries to decide in favor of the plaintiff. Plaintiffs win in tort trial cases 48% of the time. Moreover, they are more likely to win tort trials decided by a judge (57%) than a jury (48%).

<snip>

Tort "Reform" Myth: Juries are more likely then judges to award punitive damages.

Study Says: Wrong! In fact, plaintiffs seeking punitive damages fare better with judges than with juries, according to the study. In 1996 tort trials decided by a judge, punitive damages were awarded in 8% of the trials, compared to 3% of jury trials.

Tort "Reform" Myth: The tort system has been turned into a lottery system favoring plaintiffs.

Study Says: Wrong! Awards -- both compensatory and punitive -- are much smaller than is commonly perceived, whether they are handed out by judges or juries.

Tort "Reform" Myth: Tort plaintiffs are using the courts to cripple American businesses.

Survey Says: Wrong! Most lawsuits do not involve an individual suing a business. Only 39% of tort claims involved an individual suing a business. Most tort cases, 42%, were individuals suing each other.

Tort Reform Myth: Product liability and medical malpractice litigation is overloading our courts and federal legislation is needed to stem it.

Survey Says: Wrong! Product liability and medical malpractice litigation is not overloading our courts. Only 11% of tort trials were for medical malpractice and 2.3% were for defective products (not including asbestos cases, which were another 1.8%.) In contrast, automobile accident cases accounted for 49% of all tort trials, with three-fifths of those cases being one individual suing another.

There's more info at the Public Citizen's Civil Justice and Legal Rights site http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/index.cfm above, but those are some of the major ones.