"Tort reform," meanwhile would simply transfer needed damage compensation from ordinary people to doctors and insurance companies. It's an atrocious right-wing plot.
Justin is right. Resisting "tort reform" is an important aspect of self-defense.
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of james at communistbanker.com Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2004 9:37 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Excessive Lawsuits, Gay Rights, Tort Reform,and the Incredibles
I think Justin is missing the even larger context. Victims of medical negligence have, in my opinion, no more moral claim for compensation than victims of unfortunate accidents. In both cases civilized societies should provide resources in relation to need, not in relation to another's negligence. And if medics are negligent, this should be a matter for professional regulation, or criminal law, depending on circumstance.
The current system is massively inefficient - victims have to wait for the legal process to be resolved before getting payment, and lawyers on both sides take a big chunk of the overall social costs. It is also a poor system for aligning payouts to the level of negligence involved and the level of suffering. And it incentivises the wrong things when hospitals act on the basis of what the lawyers say, rather than on the basis of clinical need. The additional cost here is that unnecessary tests are performed to cover the backs of the doctors, and that poor clinical decisions are made because people are thinking only about what they are least likely to be sued over.
The political motivation for tort reform, the political orientation of the lawyers, and indeed Justin's profession, are irrelevant to the wider question of how best to deal with the questions of punishing the negligent and compensating victims.
James Greenstein
--- andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 08:34:11 -0800 (PST) To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: [lbo-talk] Excessive Lawsuits, Gay Rights, Tort Reform,
and the Incredibles
--- Michael Dawson <mdawson at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
> >> The heroes are out of business because of
> excessive
> lawsuits?
>
> >What is rightwing about that? Heterosexuals often
> use lawsuits
> to close down queer meeting spots with accusations
> of violation of
> zoning laws, etc., etc.
Brian, you're missing the larger context. "Excessive lawsuits" is code for "need tort reform and med mal caps on noneconomic (pain and suffering) damages." The rhetoric is part of a political and in part successful legal campaign to deny victims of medical negligence and corporate malfeasance the right to resoanable recovery in the courts.
And AlSO: not to be minimized: to undermine the economic basis of the plaintiffs' trial lawyers lobbies, like ATLA, which are overwhelmingly Democratic. This is a quite conscious and explicitly stated Rove-Delay strategy. So, yes, the excessive lawsuits stuff is core right wing ideology.
And it's bad for gays: nuisance suits against bathouses and clubs are small change, if the trial lawyers are defunded, the Democrats will not be there in Congress to protect as much as they do, however much that is, but more than the GOP, against gay-baiting initiatives.
Tort reform is also bad for people who have been injured by powerful interests -- frankly, whose injuries are typically far more severe than the need to go a few extra blocks to a new club or bathhouse. I am not saying that it's OK harass gays or unusual sexual activities -- you know that I oppose such harassment -- but the people who are hurt by tort reform are often incapacitated for life and cannot earn any money anymore, so they need more than the, say $250K that Congress is willing to allow them. never mind state legislatures in at least 30 states that I am ware of.
Btw, I'm a corporate defense lawyer -- I don't do product liability or insurance defense, but my job is to defend large corporations that are alleged to have committed antitrust violations, civil and criminal. as well as other white collar defendants being investigated for fraud and embezzlement, etc. Enron types. (I defend convicted murderers for free in my spare time ha ha.) So I am making what we call in the biz a statement against material interest.
jks
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