Just plain ole' Americans could REALLY make an impact by supporting tort reform....!!! Found several articles of interest....
I certainly agree with you in this: A more important issue, if you want to help this country, would be tort reform. Lawyers and lawsuits are tearing this country apart at the seams. Do us all a favor and fight for that.
This first article is from US News and World Report:
U.S. News 11/1/99
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The reign of the tort kings
A handful of trial lawyers are rocking CEOs and politicians
BY MARIANNE LAVELLE AND ANGIE CANNON
Even the mighty six-shooter is no match for trial lawyers this year. In recent weeks, after a small group of powerful attorneys had aimed two dozen cases at the gun industry, the legendary Colt's Manufacturing Co. threw up its hands, cutting back on sales of consumer handguns. About the same time, the stocks of managed health care organizations tumbled as much as 30 percent when some of the same litigators, calling themselves "the Re- pair Team," sued the HMOs. And another legal cadre–again, with many familiar faces–squeezed a $3.75 billion settlement for users of the dangerous diet drugs fen-phen– the largest pay- off ageement ever by a single company. But even that stunning figure fades beside the $246 billion the plaintiffs' bar smoked out of Big Tobacco companies last year.
In recent months, the nation's loose-knit fraternity of trial lawyers–a dozen fabulously successful firms leading a vanguard of thousands–have emerged as an awesome force, shaking the courtroom, the boardroom, and the back room. They now wield political clout unthinkable when Republicans seized control of Congress in 1995, and an aide to Newt Gingrich unabashedly declared the then House speaker's desire "not just to beat the trial lawyers, but to grind them into fine dust." Today, the GOP's proposed limits on product- liability suits is but a distant memory. A sign of just how much things have changed: House Republicans last month voted for a patients' bill of rights that permits new lawsuits against HMOs.
The verdict. Trial lawyers are winning big in court and on Capitol Hill, pumping buckets of cash into campaign coffers and helping sculpt national strategy. Their tactics are as tough, if not tougher, and, collectively, their pockets as deep as those of some of the wealthiest corporate donors. Yet, they view themselves as latter-day Davids righting wrongs committed by Goliaths of business. Tobacco lawsuits, in which the trial lawyers rubbed elbows with state attorneys general, gave the group unprecedented entree into government circles. And their access to politicians has only grown as the tobacco case fees have rolled in. Lawyers representing the first three states that settled–Florida, Mississippi, and Texas–were awarded $8.2 billion in legal fees.
Perhaps the best illustration of their new political muscle is the behind-the-scenes tobacco machinations at the White House this year. President Clinton's advisers wanted to file a civil lawsuit against the tobacco industry to recoup federal Medicare costs, as the states had done. But the Justice Department had qualms. Who you gonna call? Tobaccobusters! The trial lawyers who had represented the states were summoned to the White House for brainstorming sessions to help fashion a strategy to persuade cautious Justice. "It was a first," says plaintiffs' lawyer Richard Scruggs of Pascagoula, Miss., about the confabs. What does it mean? "We are now . . . moving these issues with more substantive political participation, helping our friends with information and ideas," says Washington, D.C., attorney John Coale.
But there's a price. Now that the tobacco settlement dust has cleared and lawyers are raking in their walloping, billion-dollar fees, states are trying to renegotiate with the attorneys for payments in the modest multimillions. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is leading a move for new laws that would limit states' use of contingency-fee lawyers. Among its proposals: Any lawyer who donated more than $250 to a politician's campaign could not be hired to file a lawsuit. Trial lawyers' swelling influence could also be an issue in the 2000 presidential election; GOP front-runner Gov. George W. Bush, who supports tort reform, has vowed to "stand up and fight the trial bar."
Turning point. The state tobacco litigation, initiated in 1994, marked a turning point. Instead of suing tobacco on behalf of individual smokers, a group of prominent trial lawyers crafted a strategy of suing for tobacco's societal toll on health care costs. And they fronted the money with winnings from other big cases. "Asbestos gave us a war chest for tobacco," says Scruggs, and now tobacco fees will finance "more daunting cases." Scruggs told U.S. News that new HMO cases will reach 100 million enrollees through suits against a half-dozen industry leaders, including Cigna and Pacific Mutual. In mid-October, the trial warriors sued former lead-paint manufacturers for health costs still generated by their banned product. And 28 cities have sued gun manufacturers to recover the public costs of firearms' use on urban streets.
"They have invented a formula where they get megabucks . . . for being a superlegislature and creat- ing policy to their liking without regard to the right of the electorate to make the ultimate decisions about public policy," says Lester Brickman, a legal ethicist at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. While some plaintiffs do reap substantial sums from their lawsuits, critics point to recent cases over computer screen size and cell phone service overcharges that netted fat fees for attorneys–but little for their clients. "The attorneys profit handsomely . . . and class members don't get anything," says John Beisner, a Washington, D.C., lawyer lobby- ing for curbs on class-action suits.
Trial lawyers have always sunk a healthy portion of their winnings into the political arena. And those contributions are getting larger. The Associated Press estimates that trial lawyers gave $4.1 million to federal candidates during the first six months of 1999, nearly doubling their donations in the last pre-presidential election year, 1995. A U.S. News analysis shows that nearly one third of that money came from 12 law firms that spearheaded the tobacco litigation.
It turns out that trial lawyers have also ponied up a plump $2 million in "soft" money–unregulated and unlimited contributions designated for party building instead of candidates–since last year for the Democrats' effort to regain control of the House, according to a U.S. News survey. That's at least 10 percent of the party's stash for congressional campaigns. Among the most generous givers: Ronald Motley of Charleston, S.C., and his law partners, who contributed $250,000 to the Democrats in June, which exceeded their total giving in the 1995-1996 season. "With a Democratic Congress, tort reform does not happen," explains Coale.
Fighting back. Frederick Baron, renowned for his Dallas firm's asbestos and environmental contamination cases, says that trial lawyers' stepped-up political activity is a reaction to the lawyer-bashing rhetoric from the GOP-ers now running Congress. "Lawyers felt the need to get more involved and contribute to candidates willing to look out for victims' rights," he says.
Trial lawyers argue their money is a mere trickle compared with the river of contributions by big-business advocates of tort reform. Agribusiness, communications, transportation, energy, and manufacturing industries contributed $6.7 million to the Democrats' congressional soft money in the past two years–nearly four times the trial lawyers' share. "If there's a cynical view that someone is out there buying access and influence, it's not the plaintiffs' lawyers," says Elizabeth Cabraser, a San Francisco trial attorney. "We are always going to be outspent." Indeed, the trial lawyers are not unbeatable in the political world. They lost an important battle this year when Congress voted to limit lawsuits over the Y2K computer bug; a deal that scaled back the legislation's scope garnered President Clinton's signature.
If members of Congress and state legislatures believe that trial lawyers have too much power, the trial lawyers say lawmakers have only themselves to blame. "If you have an industry that is a problem, like tobacco, guns, and HMOs," and Congress fails to change it, says Coale, "then it is ripe for us to step in."
*1998-99 contributions by firm and partners |
