Our Enemy is Us
Why we bought into limiting our rights to sue
By Dave Berkman
The Class Action Fairness Coalition, which recently identified itself in a New York Times ad as "a group of companies and business organizations dedicated to making America's class-action lawsuit system simpler, fairer and faster," was actually a bit disingenuous. A more honest identifier would have read, "... an organization dedicated to perpetuating our right as businesses to cheat, injure and kill our employees and customers without having to adequately compensate them after we've done so."
And these are the folks who've just won. Big. That's because tort "reform," which vastly decreases the possibility to sue corporations for their malfeasance, is now the law. (Needless to state, the bill places no limitations on the legal rights of corporations to bring suits against those they charge with having wronged them.) In the Senate, the bill passed with only 27 voting against. Eight of its sponsors were Democrats, and 18 - including Herb Kohl - voted for it.
The chief vehicle for those of us who are wronged‹especially when it's a function of a pattern of corporate misconduct, such as that committed by the tobacco companies, car manufacturers and corporations such as Wal-Mart that have discriminated against workers by shorting pay and discriminated against women in wages and promotions‹is through class-action suits brought in state courts. (Otherwise each wronged person would have to bring a separate action.) But under this law, spearheaded by Republicans‹who only move to limit states' rights when they protect all citizens rather than just the wealthy few‹state courts are now nearly precluded from hearing class-action suits. They must be tried in federal courts, which have consistently refused to certify such cases, if less than one-third of the plaintiffs are from the same state as the primary defendant and more than $5 million is at stake.
http://www.shepherd-express.com/mediamusings.htmAnybody else read Berkman first thing when you get the Shepherd?
RL
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