JUL. 8, 2004: NO LAWYER LEFT BEHIND
Score: Trial Lawyers 9, White House 0. So the Wall Street Journal reports this morning. Since 2001, nine major tort reform proposals have reached the Senate. All nine failed.
Journal reporter Shailagh Murray observes: “The trial lawyers’ association, long viewed as one of Washington’s smartest and most partisan lobbies, has outmaneuvered the White House and its business allies at almost every turn.” Murray observes that the litigation lobby has been able to pick up just enough Republican support to keep winning after 2002. Their two best allies: Orrin Hatch and Lindsey Graham.
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(Murray’s reporting is unfortunately marred by her credulous acceptance of the trial lawyers’ dumbest talking point – that Hatch and Graham vote as they do because of a principled belief “that government regulation is bad – including regulation that restricts the ability of lawyers and their clients to rake in big judgments.” “Regulation” as the phrase is ordinarily used in Washington refers to government-imposed restrictions on the behavior of private individuals and companies; tort reform restricts the behavior of other branches of the government: the courts.)
Murray suggests that the winning record of the trial lobby suggests trouble ahead for Republican campaign plans to use John Edwards’ financial history against him. Edwards, remember, has made a fortune by suing people and then claiming a third of the gigantic verdicts he won. Some of his claims may have had merit. That’s not the dispute. The dispute is whether the right way to vindicate good claims is to allow individual entrepreneurs to pick out some especially pitiful cases and charge huge fees to their clients – even as thousands of other possibly much more deserving claims go unvindicated, because the plaintiffs are less personally sympathetic.
Walter Olson brilliantly exposes the lawyers' racket in his witty book, The Litigation Explosion, as well as in his daily collection of lawyer horror stories, Overlawyered.com.
(Today’s outrage: “"A drunken passenger who fell two decks from a staircase while aboard Royal Caribbean's Monarch of the Seas asked Florida's 3rd District Court of Appeal on Monday to reinstate his personal injury lawsuit against the cruise line." In oral argument, the appellate court's chief judge appeared inclined to reinstate the suit, rejecting the cruise line's argument that it is covered by a state law protecting sellers of liquor from being sued.” Olson also had an interesting oped about Edwards in yesterday’s New York Sun.)
The intellectual argument against today's tort system is overwhelmingly stgrong - but trial lawyers gain their money by defeating intellectual arguments with emotional appeals, in the courtroom as well as in the Senate. The courtroom is a theater in which lawyers choreograph battles between the wronged little guy and the heartless impersonal corporation. The show is often fictitious, even absurd – but the audience, the jury, believes it often enough to have made John Edwards and his friends hugely rich. That wealth has bought the Democratic party. It’s now bidding for the congressional Republicans – with the success the Journal documents. And with the addition of John Edwards to the Democratic ticket, that wealth will now join the other hugely wealthy special interests funding the lavish Kerry campaign.
Ann Coulter had a nice phrase: "I guess with John Kerry's choice of John Edwards as his running mate, he really does want to stand up for all Americans, from those worth only $60 million to those worth in excess of $800 million." That sums up the truth about Kerry-Edwards, but it's a truth that will need massive repetition before the voters - and the Senate - hear it through the applause of Edwards' fawning media coverage. |
