Z,
So should businesses get away with the things they're being sued for? When the business loses a suit, that means it's done something wrong.
You have compensatory damages and punitive damages. Compensatory damages compensate the injured party for damage done (and even these can be inflated).
Punitive damages can be large multiple of compensatory damages, are completely unjustified, and are there to support the enormous industry of the trial lawyers ripping off the country.
I was a juror - an alternate juror on one case. It wasn't clear to me if the doctor was at fault, since there were 2 doctors operating on the patient, and the second one (not the one being sued was in my opinion at fault).
Somewhat indirectly, the compensatory damage claimed was $175,000 but the lawyer asked for $1.5M. How do you justify that? Fortunately, the jury had a fair number of well educated individuals and awarded no punitive damages, only compensatory, no matter the theatrics of the sleazeball laywer (maybe sleazeball Edwards is better at this)
But let's look at this doctor's business. He is one of the best ones in his field and charges some 12K, and says openly to all his incoming patients that his success rate is about 97%. 3 out of 100 of these elective surgeries don't succeed.
Let's do the math (something very much against the nature of a typical Democrat) and calculate the cost if each failure - and failures are inevitable - cost 1.5M
100 of these surgeries would cost 4.5M just in the payout of damages. We are talking 45,000 in litigation costs per surgery, or shutting down this doctors practices.
The doctor's fee is 12,000, or maybe it used to be. If you add only the compensatory fees, they would inflate each surgery by $5,250.
These trial lawyers are a very evil force in this country, an it takes a blind partisan to not recognize this.
Joe |
