Secular Apostate

Trial lawyers and the amusingly named “American Association for Justice” have donated $25,724,000 to Democrats since 1990.

As a result, Congressional Democrats have steadfastly refused to permit meaningful tort reform legislation to pass, despite the amazing success of such legislation at the state level:

For most of the past 30 years, Mississippi has ranked as one of the poorest as well as one of the most litigious states. The two statistics are related.

I met with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour recently, and this politician, best known for helping his state rebuild after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, had a lot to say about lawsuits.

“We were America’s No. 1 judicial hell hole for jackpot jury verdicts,” the two-term Republican governor told me. “For trial lawyers, this was the state you wanted to come to if you wanted to sue someone.”

But it was not the state to come to if you wanted to start a business. Mississippi’s antibusiness reputation was so awful, Mr. Barbour said, that the CEOs of several Fortune 500 companies told him specifically that they wouldn’t consider locating in the state unless the tort system was fixed.

For doctors, the situation was a little different – many who were inside the state were getting out as fast as they could. With 25% annual increases in malpractice premiums, many physicians simply couldn’t survive if they stayed. The outflux left some counties without a single obstetrician. In some cases, residents had to drive 100 miles to find a doctor.

One of the worst places, in term of frivolous lawsuits, was Jefferson County. It became renowned as the lawsuit capital of the country, with more plaintiffs than residents…

But, thanks to tort reform with teeth,

[...] the state’s unemployment rate is down to about 6% from nearly 9%. Last year, Mississippi’s per capita income growth was 6.7%, third highest of the 50 states and well above the national average of 5.2%. Mississippi tort reform is making the poor richer, and the rich lawyers less fabulously rich. Now that’s a good way to close the income gap.

Last Saturday, John Wylie wrote about one of the most devastated wastelands in civil litigation, asbestos:

Asbestos, the flame retardant that literally saved America’s Pacific fleet and the free world in World War II, now threatens the free world economy. Blame unscrupulous lawyers.

Tragically, this life-saving material ultimately was proved to cause deadly cancers in the lungs — and ultimately spawned the nation’s largest, longest-running mass tort. As James R. Copland, director of the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy, puts it: “A flame retardant originally thought to be a ‘magic mineral,’ asbestos ended up causing the death of thousands of individuals exposed in the workplace; likewise, litigation that sought redress for the truly injured metastasized into a big business that recruited sham victims to beef up plaintiffs’ bar’s bottom lines.”

As I learned from writing a story for the January 2007 issue of Reader’s Digest, corruption and fraud involving asbestos and silica litigation is endemic. Now the Manhattan Institute has published a far more detailed analysis, “Trial Lawyers, Inc.: Asbestos.” It is the fifth in the institute’s series on the litigation industry.

The report shows that the long-running asbestos-lawsuit scam has destroyed 80 companies and the employees and shareholders who depend on them, and created a system so corrupt that judges and advisors were guilty of outright extortion and theft. Companies forced into bankruptcy by questionable claims are now being scammed again by attorneys double-dipping from the trusts these companies created for those who really were injured.

The trial lawyers’ strategy has involved collecting hundreds of thousands of workers — some sick, some healthy, and some whose true condition is unknown; the unscrupulous lawyers even call them “inventory.” With the huge case volume, profit-minded lawyers find it easiest and most cost-effective to encourage quick settlements and move on.

Tragically, real victims — workers who actually face serious future health problems due to asbestos exposure — are often duped into signing away future rights for a pittance in order to pad current attorney fees, and are then left with no recourse if they actually become sick…

Democrats. The Party of the Common Man. If that man happens, by the way, to own a Gulfstream.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 8:36 am and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.