Category: Frivolous Lawsuits: A Myth

Great video, great song. The video speaks for itself. Produced by Consumer Attorneys of California A World Without Lawyers – The top video clips of the week are here

What do McDonald’s, Jack-in-the-Box and an uninsured motorist have in common? Well, you might recall that back in the day elderly Stella Liebeck was the victim of a hot coffee spill at a McDonald’s drive-through. When McDonald’s refused to pay for her skin grafts and other related medical bills, they were hit with a multi-million dollar verdict. McDonald’s whined and cried and screamed bloody murder but, the truth is, that the verdict was in response to their refusal to lower the temperature of the coffee they served to something safe — i.e., a temperature which doesn’t cause third degree burns… Read More

Victoria Powell is the founder and current President of VP Medical Consulting. She has been providing nursing education and consulting services for 14 years. Ms. Powell is a Registered Nurse and holds specialty certifications in Case Management, Legal Nurse Consulting, Life Care Planning and Ergonomic Assessments. She wrote Frivolous Lawsuit: Not So Fast. Her insight and analysis of large jury verdicts in catastrophic cases are excellent and well taken. If you’ve read my blog in the past, you know that I believe that there is no such thing as a frivolous lawsuit and that the phrase is a misnomer. In… Read More

The New York Post just published a story about a young guy who lost his leg just below the calf when an MTA Train ran over him while he lay on the tracks. The public is outraged by this story because the 25 year old victim, Dustin Dibble, was drunk and fell onto the tracks. The outrage should not be directed at Dibble, however, because the ultimate cause of his injury arose when, per Dibble’s attorney Andrew Smiley, “a subway-train operator is obligated to stop a subway train before it strikes a large object on the tracks, even if it… Read More

(Albany) has published Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sexual Abuse (Harvard University Press 2008), available here. The abstract (from SSRN) reads: The sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy is arguably the most acute crisis Catholicism has faced since the Reformation. The prevalence of clergy sexual abuse and its shocking cover-up by church officials have obscured the largely untold story of the tort system’s remarkable success in bringing the scandal to light, focusing attention on the need for institutional reform, and spurring church leaders and public officials into action. Stories of the tort system as an engine… Read More

I just found this fantastic Slowpoke cartoon by Jen Sorensen entitled “Slouching Towards Hypocrisy.” Amusingly poignant. To paraphrase former First Lady Nancy Reagan, “Just Say No To Tort Reform.”

Thanks to Bob Kraft’s Blog for bringing to light the facts regarding the reality behind the Texas “tort reform” legislation of 2003. In essence, the “tort reform” is nothing more than the insurance companies’ ability to lobby to put a cap on pain and suffering while increasing their profits. They have essentially stripped victims of medical malpractice from the ability to access the courts. Watch Fox 4 “Investigation-Tort Reform Questions” here. Read the Fox 4 “Investigation: Tort Reform Benefits Questioned” here. The rationale behind the legislation was that doctors were leaving in droves due to high medical malpractice insurance premiums and the threat of… Read More

Philip G. Peters, Jr., of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law writes this enlightening article entitled “The Fairness of Malpractice Settlements.” He writes “Over the past quarter of a century, more than a dozen studies have collected data on malpractice settlements. With only one exception, they have consistently shown that plaintiffs with strong cases are more likely to receive a settlement payment than plaintiffs with weak cases. Moreover, the data on malpractice settlement strongly suggests that liability insurers possess a palpable advantage in bargaining power.” This is yet another article in support of the very strong assertion that frivolous lawsuits are… Read More

The Texas law firm of Perlmutter & Schuelke has posted an excellent article to their BLOG entitled Tort Reform: Straight From the Horse’s (or the Judge’s) which summarizes a Baylor University study wherein they surveyed Texas Civil Judges regarding their opinions on Tort Reform (or, as I like to call it, Tort Deform). Essentially, the report found that “the results were findings that substantially more judges thought juries had awarded too low of damages than judges that thought juries had awarded too much. And well over 80% of the judges did not think there needed to be additional “reform” to address frivolous lawsuits.” The… Read More

Below is an article that was posted in the South Carolina Personal Injury Law Blog on April 26, 2007: From the American Association for Justice: A bogus study released today by the national Chamber of Commerce claiming to rank so-called “anti-business” state legal systems is yet another baseless attack on the nation’s civil justice system in its campaign to eliminate corporate accountability for wrongdoing and negligence. “This latest propaganda is a made-up survey primarily of corporate lawyers earning millions of dollars defending their CEOs from being held accountable,” said Jon Haber, chief executive officer of the American Association for Justice. “The Chamber will stop at nothing to destroy… Read More