On The Issue of Tart Refarm

[Fartpolio Manager]

Fart Reform... This is just another easy thing for the Shrubs to do... instead of solving the real problems of our economy, Shrub is trying to reform America... They blaming lawyers now for all our problems, social, economic and otherwise.

 

As long as they can get investors and the public to concentrate on the trees and not the forest, they'll just keep doing it. It's easier to march corporate criminals out in front of cameras than to craft and execute a new economic program... meanwhile they nail the 2 bit guys and the big crooks get away. Martha takes the headlines while Kenny Boy is busy cashing out of the casino...

 

It's the same deal with the U Michigan thing... anything to keep the economy out of the news... Iraq, N. Korea, Aids in Africa.... whatever diversion they can flaunt, while the economy just continues to go down the drain...

 

Lawyers are just the lastest victims of the Shrub... whatever it takes to keep your mind off the business he's not getting done...

 

It will all blow over, don't worry... they won't get zip done on this one.

[Dustbowl]

Dust, don't expect to win any arguments with the facts.

 

SEG, That statement reminds me of an old law school saying: If you got the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you got the law on your side, argue the law, If you don't have either, just call the other side names and hope it sticks.

[StanWeinstein]

We would be better able to compete in the tough global business environment if we could restore order to our out-of-control tort system. Perhaps this goal can be attained, now that the Republicans have the Oval Office and both houses of Congress. We just need to see some regulations put in place to help restore ethics and honesty to the business and legal arena. Unless checked, the army of class-action lawyers poised to pounce on Wall Street and corporate America will just boost its war chest for ASSaults to come.

Corporate America is its own worst enema. A minority of misfits can't control themselves and what ends up happening is strict rules are imposed on everyone, with the unintended consequence of stunting growth. Yeah, greedy lawyers can be a problem ... as are pontificating politicians. But, neither would be necessary if Corporate America was able to get control of the misfits in its midst. I'm still waiting for the day when we see rapid Martha-Stewart-like justice wrought upon Ken Lay and other miscreants who muddied the waters for honest entrepeneurs.

[StanWeinstein]

So called free market capitalists have a bizarrre double-standard on this subject.   It's WRONG for trial lawyers to want money, but it's the RIGHT motive for all other forms of human endeavor.

 

This is hypocrisy.

Not necessarily. If your self-interest in wanting money adds wealth to the overall economy, that's a positive. IF lawyers self-interest in wanting money subtracts wealth from the economy, that's not necessarily good. If one holds the view (certainly debatable) that class-action lawyers reduce the wealth of society, than it could be argued that their pursuit of money is non-productive. Of course, BAREister has valid points as well. Corporate America (at least a minority thereof) has demonstrated its inability to control itself. Its unfortunate that a few can spoil if for the many ... but, that's what most laws are about anyway ... imposing restrictions on all to control a few.

[StanWeinstein]

I don't care about the cause.  It isn't greedy malpractice insurance companies- 3 have already left Georgia completely.  They don't want more money.  They want to LEAVE.  It's not profitable to write the policies.  And they left.

I'm sure you didn't really mean that. Causation is everything if a solution is to be found. What you describe COULD certainly cause premiums to rise. IF insurance companies pull out, you have a basic supply/demand situation. Supply of insurance goes down, so premiums go up. And, price is serving the function of driving down demand ... demand, in this case being doctors. Doctors are responding rationally to higher prices. The question is: why is supply of insurance dwindling? Is it really so simple as "they made bad investments?" Or, it it a tad more complex? My feeling is that there is probably plently of blame to go around -- lawyers, politicians and insurance companies. No purpose is served in trying to place the blame entirely on one class, IMO.

[alceringa]

IMO all that needs to be done is adopt the following simple rule for tarts-

 

"Loser pays EVERYBODY's expenses."

 

You can still sue whoever you want about anything you want. All you got to do is pay their bills if you lose.

[StanWeinstein]

The only remedy is reducing the percentage of lawyers in the population to the level which prevails in normal, healthy societies elsewhere in the world. No, I'm not proposing genocide here. Just drastically reducing the number of law schools in order to cut capacity. Those empty law schools can be turned into schools for doctors, nurses, engineers, musicians, artists, writers ... professions which add value rather than redistributing wealth.

One way to do that is by making frivolous lawsuits more costly for those who wish to pursue them. Just as higher premiums have the effect of reducing the number of practicing doctors, something like a loser-pays system would reduce the number of lawyers willing to pursue marginal class-action suits. Note that the intention here is not (or shouldn't be) to discourage legitimate legal claims ... only those that have no merit and are more likely to be tossed out.

[Dustbowl]

Stan, Could you please describe a "marginal" class action lawsuit? Also, could you describe by what standards you would prescribe a legitimate legal claim? Would you circumvent the jury system as the arbiter of legal claims?

[Slothrop]

Stan: I would argue that corporations who violate the law subtract wealth from the economy and that trial lawyers who bring justice to the situation add wealth.

[Drano]

IMO all that needs to be done is adopt the following simple rule for tarts-

 

"Loser pays EVERYBODY's expenses."

 

You can still sue whoever you want about anything you want. All you got to do is pay their bills if you lose.

In a perfect world, with a perfect justice system staffed with judges who are all the mental equivalent of our greatest justices, sure, that makes sense.

 

Can any of the attorneys here say that they have never had a client lose, who should have won?

 

Have any of you non-attorneys had first-hand experience trying to fight against insurance companies staffed by macho idiots who don't want to settle a case which has provable and obvious damages, because it looks bad for them to their bosses that they settled a case, so instead they run their company's legal bills into six figures?

 

Have any of you won a large judgment against someone who then goes bankrupt to avoid paying?

 

I have.

 

Simplistic solutions like "loser pays all" will only keep the little guy out of court, because courts are already biased against the little guy when he's a plaintiff, and adding the fear of having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of a big insurance company's (needless and frivolous) legal bills will destroy any chance of recourse the average person has. On the other hand, a deadbeat who has no intention of paying the other side's legal fees if he loses, will go right ahead and file a suit. This is exactly the kind of person who clogs the courts with suits of dubious merit.

 

It is hard enough for the average person to find lawyers to take complex cases on contingency, and most people do not have the money to hire a lawyer for tens of thousands of dollars to try to get recourse if they have a valid claim. The number of frivolous claims is very small compared to the number of valid claims, most of which are settled out of court ONLY because insurance companies fear a bigger verdict against them in court. I feel sorry for the many highly competent doctors who have had unjust malpractice suits filed against them -- but destroying the average person's access to court is not the answer to their problem.

[Dustbowl]

Drano, I have been in those same positions. It's a little ironic, given all the comments about greedy lawyers, that the only complaint ever lodged against me with the state bar association involved a case where a client told me the facts about an injury he suffered due to the negligence of his landlord. Upon investigation and a fair amount of money spent by me to investigate, I discovered that the client was not being honest about the cause of the injury or the extent of his injury. I called the client in and gave his case back to him with a full explanation that I would not represent him. He contacted the bar association with a complaint. The general counsel of our bar investigated his complaint and did not refer the complaint to the disciplinary tribunal. Damned if you do and damned if you don't?

[BAREister]

Well....The BARE seems to have ignited a CONTRETEMPTS of sortz (or OUT-of-sortz may be more like it! LOL)

 

Mr TwoScrewsLoose, com'ON!!! ADMIT IT!!! You'd like to see lawyers LIQUIDATED. PreFURably ass many ass possible.

Won't WURK, tho. They're like WEEDS.

 

That vaccine you took was very? dangerous/fraught with risk, so, too it's other iteration. See articles in Sports Afield and Outdoor Life, etc. HRFF has saved 'em and can quote FURom 'em.

 

 

Let's differentiate about types of tort reFURm, shall we, gentle readers?

 

There's the kind Fleck (BARE shall call him Dr. - FUR his proposed prescription of Tart reFARM - DRECK henceFURth ? in this thread) is diss>>>cussin', namely the abatement of clASS action litigation vs corporations and their officers.

 

THEN there's the kind the Dr is talking about. Now, lettuce examine the FACTS, shall we, BUTT, beFUR we do, The BARE would like to quote the late, grrrrrreat director John Huston, who, when feted at a party in his honor very late in his VERY long life, wuz ASSked: To what, exactly, Mr Huston, do you attribute your longevity? came the instantaneous reply: "Modern surgery!!!"

 

Well HRFF is in the same position. He's had half a dozen thoracic procedures, including one FUR a ruptured appendix, and he owes his health and existence to modern medicine. He nearly perished, twice, from pneumonia as a young child. In an earlier age HRFF would SNOT have lASSted ass long ass he hASS. Nosireee. So maybe his very existence is a GIGANTIC COSMIC JOKE, PERPetrated by those people in the medical purrrrFESHHHUNN!!! It's ALL THEIR fawlt!

 

now, whereWUZzi? oh, yes, with THAT diss>>>claimer out of the way, lettuce examine the facts of the medical profession.

 

Over 100,000 people die due to medical malpractice in hospitals every year. This, per a doctor - actually several of them. HRFF can name names of the accusers.

 

Of course, many more are healed. Americans like to think they enjoy the highest standard of health care in the world. They don't. We're fairly far down actually, among the top countries, anyway. Incompetent physicians are part of the px.

A vigorous legal system is an essential prerequisite to preventing further mediocrity than already exists. It DOES exist, HRFF experienced it for about half a decade as specialist after specialist, doctor after doctor repeatedly misdiagnosed his condition, which was structural, doing things like prescribing steroids. NO! The BARE is SNOT STILL on STEROIDS, ass much ass some of you might like to THINK!

Surgery corrected the problem. And these birdbrains missed a characteristic "presentation" of the illness, not the most commonly presented, but one they should have known about. To make matters worse, four years after the initial visitation, after the major surgery, HRFF went to see his original attending physician, who just happened to "notice" a "note" in the margin of the file wondering if the very condition finally diagnosed was to blame. He failed to follow up on it. The BARE could have sued him from here to Kingdom Come FUR that negligence. He elected SNOT to. A year later the doc, complaining bitterly about the pressures from HMO preventing him from spending more time with his patients, was dead from cancer.

 

So ass someone once said to HRFF: NEVER lose sight of the fact that HALF the doctors out there were in the BOTTOM half of their class in medical school!

So, too, were LAWYERS, butt we're not talking about them here, R WE, gentle? reader?

 

So, FUR these reasons, The BARE has mixed emotions about physicians and medicine.

 

The BARE said he feels jury awards for pain and suffering in malpractice cases are SOMETIMES wildly out of proportion. Usually they are reduced on appeal significantly if huge at the trial court level. You never hear THAT from physicians or their insurers!

 

Do lawyers wander around the office trying to dream up arguments about how to maximize damages in cases? YES, THEY DO. HRFF hASS SEEN it. In PERSON.

 

Will we get a national tort reFURm bill? No, we WON'T. Having a doctor in charge of the Senate is NO ASSurance of it. Nor a non-lawyer in the Oral OOOPS! Orifice OOOPS!!! (HRFF hASSn't been able to spell that correctly since Billary HAD SEX WITH THAT WOMAN)

 

 

When more people die, annually, in hospitals due to medical negligence at the hands of their physicians/staff than on our nation's highways, the pleas coming from the medical community are hard to take seriously. Doctors need to clean up their act. People need to stop dying like flies in hospitals every year. Limits on pain and suffering awards need to be imposed. Yet jury awards must remain large enough to deter and put fear into those in the medical profession who would be otherwise cavalier or indolent. (They had a scandal here at the Univ of WA medical hospital over the number of objects sewn up accidentally inside surgery patients recently.) Is the crisis confronting doctors today mostly attributable to lawyers? No.

Mostly to insurers? No. Mostly to doctors, then? No. All are to blame.

 

Physicians seem to think they are entitled to huge incomes and anything that sharply reduces that is a societal threat to be eliminated. Their expectation is understandable - they were behaviorally conditioned to that hope throughout their arduous and protracted academic training. They are highly skilled and intelligent and work horrendous hours and are burdened with continual educational burdens. Caught, now, twixt the pressures of the HMO's insurers and the rising exposure to legal liability, their exasperation is something with which the public should empathize. Does "feeling their pain" mean throwing our ways of doing things legally overboard? NO!

 

So doctors are voting with their feet. They're leaving W Va in droves - actually at Xmas they were threatening to go on strike.

 

Well they can have a temper tantrum if they want. Maybe some of 'em are loaded enough that they can retire. A lot won't be able to, and will have to move to UDDER jurisdictions where the same problems will re-emerge, no? doubt. In Ohio and W Va and western PA there are HORDES of doctors trained overseas, from places like India who might be willing to take their place, malpractice insurance or no malpractice insurance.

 

There's one lobby more powerful than the AMA, the NRA, the Chamber of Commerce and that's the ABA.

 

If six Senators can protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from the clutches of The Shrub in his budget bill, you can bet your bottom dollar they'll find at least six to stop the kind of tort DEform the AMA and The Shrub are clamoring FUR GUESSES this observer.

 

Of course all of this may be "solved" by invoking emergency powers. The ONLY thing capable of igniting that, short of nuclear attack are biological weapons of mass destruction. That won't help the doctors, though. They'll be in the vortex of danger.

 

We have to have both doctors and a legal system that puts the fear of GAWD into 'em to keep 'em from being worse than they already are. If people didn't die in such large nos. from their mistakes, if our medical system was the best on earth, they'd have a better 'leg to stand on', ass t'were.

 

Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Kinda like...........

....DARE The BARE SAY it?.....whyuGUESSED'er,Chester!!!

 

 

LAWYERS!!! LMAZZOFF

[alceringa]

I was sued once, by 3 Lawyers acting as partners in a business they sold me. Turns out they had cooked the books on the cash flow. They even doctored the copies of their tax returns they presented during my due diligence. Eventually I had to go out of business, with a note to them still outstanding.

 

At trial, the presiding judge, talked with one of the lawyers about old times. The Judge had known the lawyer since the lawyer was a youngster. Judge and youngster's dad had been junior clerks together somewhere. I asked my own lawyer why he didn't move to have the Judge recursed (or whatever). My lawyer said it wasn't necessary and that we had a fair judge.

 

Only after I lost the case, despite the evidence, including the doctored tax returns, did I find out the truth about my own lawyer's situation. He was in the middle of an appeal for another client's case to overturn this exact same judge's ruling in another case. During my trial, the appeals court ruled for my attorney and overturned the Judge's decision in the other case.

 

I got a form letter back from the state Bar Association indicating that they would consider the matter, but never heard from them again; even after several inquiries.

 

So I'm not real sympathetic to lawyers who complain about how their clients behave. :grin:

[StanWeinstein]

Stan: I would argue that corporations who violate the law subtract wealth from the economy and that trial lawyers who bring justice to the situation add wealth.

Please define wealth. BTW, I'm not saying every entrepenuer creates wealth. Only that, on net, entrepeneurs create wealth. Please explain how lawyers add wealth to an economy. As best as I can tell, lawyers absorb wealth -- i.e. they drive up the cost of production, which in turn, is passed on to the consumer.

[StanWeinstein]

Stan,  Could you please describe a "marginal" class action lawsuit?  Also, could you describe by what standards you would prescribe a legitimate legal claim? Would you circumvent the jury system as the arbiter of legal claims?

The definition is left up to the llegal profession. I can't say apriori what that would entail. Invidual lawyers would weigh for themselves whether a case was worth pursuing. If a lawyer believes his case is dubious, yet incurs no penalty to pursue, he is likely to pursue. On the other hand, if he has to contemplate the notion that he will have to pay the all fees should he lose, he will most certaintly evaluate his pursuit with quite different metrics.