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Type the word
“accident” into Google and you’ll be barraged by personal injury
lawyers advertising things like “Cash for accident victims.”
Whether you’ve slipped on your neighbor’s doorstep or burned
your tongue on a scalding pickle, money-hungry tort lawyers want
to cash in on your injury.
A few weeks ago, a
woman initiated a lawsuit after someone spilled flaming rum on
her in a bar.
Instead of suing the
person responsible for spilling the rum, the woman decided to
sue Bacardi. The reason, she claims, is that the spirit-marker’s
product is defective.
A tort is a wrongful
action by one party that results in injury to another. Tort law
serves an important purpose -- to compensate victims for their
injuries.
But today, tort law
is routinely abused by people who are just looking for a payday,
often seeking damages far in excess of their actual injuries.
When the fiancé of a
Chicago attorney broke off their engagement, the jilted
betrothed did what any tort lawyer would do: She sued him,
claiming his caddish move cost her in lost income, psychiatric
expenses, and pain and suffering.
A jury bought her sob
story, and awarded her $178,000 in damages.
Even when juries
don’t award ridiculous damages, defending oneself against these
silly suits can cost thousands or even hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
A death-row inmate in
California sued a writer for $60 million for writing a book
about him. Claiming he was not guilty of 16 murders, the inmate
whined that the book’s characterization of him “defamed his good
name,” causing him to be “shunned by society.”
The case was thrown
out after a record 46 seconds, but the writer’s publisher
incurred $30,000 in legal defense fees.
Some cases are
settled for high sums, because the defendants don’t want to
spend the time and money in court – or they don’t feel
completely confident risking larger awards in court, even if the
odds are strongly in their favor.
Cases can take two to
three years to be resolved, and much longer if they’re appealed.
That costs the taxpayers money, and it ties up court
availability, meaning that honest people with legitimate claims
have to wait in line for compensation behind opportunistic
plaintiffs and their mercenary lawyers.
And there’s the
dissuasion factor. People who practice professions like
medicine, for example, where the possibility that something may
go wrong is ever-present, are especially vulnerable to lawsuit
abuse. The risk of an excessive or meritless suit discourages
many good, honest doctors from practicing.
When Hazel Norton of
Mississippi read about a class-action suit filed on behalf of
patients taking the prescription drug Propulsid, she thought, “I
might get a couple of thousand dollars” despite the fact that
she “didn’t get hurt by Propulsid.” This led to her doctor being
named in the suit, and the ultimately his and his pediatrician
wife’s decision to leave their medical practice.
In some medical
professions -- like women’s health – excessive lawsuits have
created an outright crisis. The American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) reports that over 76
percent of ACOG Fellows have been sued at least once.
Even though ob-gyns
win over 80% of the cases that go to trial, the fear of being
sued is having a devastating effect on the profession. One in
seven ACOG Fellows surveyed had simply stopped practicing
obstetrics. Meanwhile, medical school students are choosing
other fields.
The upshot? It’s
extremely difficult to find an ob-gyn willing to perform a
high-risk procedure today.
In 2000, the
President’s Council of Economic Advisers estimated that the
excessive costs of the tort system nationwide were $136 billion
– equivalent to a three-percent tax on wages. Using their
methodology, excessive costs would today exceed $198 billion,
representing a yearly tax of $2,654 on a family of four.
Fortunately, there is
a way to curb the costs of these crazy cases. States can impose
a monetary cap on impossible-to-quantify damages, like “pain and
suffering.” They can also create financial penalties to
discourage lawyers from consistently filing frivolous lawsuits.
In the meantime, we
taxpayers will continue to pay for people like Jerry Mersereau,
who recently fell off a cliff in a national park while trying to
find a place to pee in the middle of the night. Mr. Mersereau is
currently suing the U.S. government for the “mental anguish”
caused by his fall.
Tort abuse would be
funny if it weren’t so costly for the rest of us.
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