Ring of Fire: The Corporate Assault on Civil Justice

[GoLeft TV]

Years ago, Republican operatives got together to discuss their options for de-funding the Democratic Party. Their idea was to attack trial lawyers who, at the time, were the single largest donors to the Democrats. That is where the idea of “tort reform” was born, and Republicans have sold the idea to the American people by claiming that it would reduce healthcare costs. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the numbers prove it.

Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins and attorney Howard Nations discuss this.

[Enthusiast]

1. K&R! Lord help us.

[Dustlawyer]

2. K&R!!! I started practicing law in Texas in 1990. In 1991 they changed Workman's Compensation

law dramatically to the point that an attorney could not make money handling these cases if your work injury wasn't caused by another company other than your employer. For a straight up comp case it was impossible to find an attorney. The insurance companies laid off all of their defense attorneys becase the insurance adjusters would be pitted against an unrepresented working man/woman. They easily defeat most of these cases because the individual didn't know the law or their rights. The Court of Appeals found the law unconstitutional as denial of access to counsel, but the Texas Supreme Court didn't see it that way!
Now that we didn't do Workman's comp, they took away medical malpractice and asbestos. They have made the standards to recover extremely hard for product liability cases, so most of those go nowhere. People might think that it is great that attorneys are leaving the state until they need one. Like Howard said, most people voted for tort reform because it was sold as a way to stop "frivolous lawsuits." The problem was that it was designed to stop, or at least greatly reduce legitimate suits.
Frivolous lawsuits are, and have always been, extremely rare. That is because trial attorneys represent people by taking a percentage of the recovery. We pay for all case expenses as well and only get them back if there is a recovery. It is hard enough to recover on a valid case, much less a groundless one. They even had to twist and obfuscate the McDonalds Coffe Case to make it seem frivolous. The media didn't tell the American people that the lady almost died and had to have her labia and clitoris removed because Mickey D's decided to super heat their coffee world wide to get twice as much coffee out of the same beans and make it fresh longer. They confidentially settled many burn cases before this lady, Stella Liebeck, came along. When the jury heard all of the evidence they awarded 2 million. The trial judge thought it excessive for just a clit and labia so he reduced it to $900,000. This case of "The lady that sued McDonalds for spilling hot coffee on herself and got millions" was the single biggest factor in building support for tort reform. Hmmm, wonder why the MSM made this case seem frivolous?
Sorry for the rant but I needed a break from working on the BP oil spill case where BP has bribed the Plaintiff's Steering Committee with $660,000,000 to force everyone into a Class Settlement that denies 75% of the victims any recovery at all, and a pittance for the ones that do get something. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, BP is the largest advertiser on the Gulf Coast and one of the tops in the U.S., so no stories of this and what the victims are going through will ever see the light of day in the MSM.

[enough]

3. Interesting. (nt)

[Iwillnevergiveup]

4. How well I remember

Alan Grayson's mantra:

"The Republican health care plan is "don't get sick. Just don't get sick.
But if you DO get sick, die quickly."

He's right.