While I was researching my book, I tracked down a story that had been circulating during debates over products liability legislation in Congress in the mid-90s, involving a guy who sued an American flag company in Texas for injuries he'd suffered trying to bring the flag down in a wind storm. Tort reform groups like the NFIB had held up the story as an example of a frivolous lawsuit, because one of the flag companies that was sued didn't make the flag or the pole it'd been flying on.
I tracked down both the lawyer for the plaintiff and the owner of the flag company, to hear their sides of the story. The political debate had obscured very substantial and valid arguments both parties had about the lawsuit, which showed not so much that the system wasn't working, but rather, how insurance companies needlessly exacerbate some of its deficiencies.
Pete Van de Putte, the owner of Dixie Flag, in San Antonio, turned out to be a nice guy married to a democrat in the Texas legislature, and was not the hard-core tort reformer he'd been made out to be during the congressional debates. But he was pissed about the lawsuit, for good reason. His insurance company had settled the case for $5,000, without consulting him, even though his company had nothing to do with the flag accident. But the insurance company thought it was simply cheaper to pay than to fight.
I suspect this kind of decisionmaking by insurance companies happens all the time, and I don't blame people for being angry about it. Cheap settlements leave them feeling like they've been wrongly accused of a crime and never given a chance to clear their names. For most people, this is an infuriating insult and a moral outrage that goes beyond money. Van de Putte had been willing to spend his own cash to defend his case because he knew he was right, but the insurance company never gave him the opportunity.
As for the plaintiff, Hank Childers, he was indeed severely injured when he stopped in a parking lot one day and tried to help some guys at a quick-lube shop who were struggling to bring down a gigantic American flag in a heavy wind storm (the same August winds that had blown over the Pope's grandstand that year). The flag pulled Childers 70 feet in the air and then splatted him on the pavement, where his face was crushed and both arms broken. He was hospitalized for a long time and lost some vision and use of his hands and arms--ending his guitar playing forever. His face was put back together with rods and plates. He had no health insurance.
By the time he was able to contact a lawyer, the statute of limitations on the case was about to run out. His lawyer, Henry Ridgeway, says he did his best to research the case on very short notice to identify the proper parties, but that he did have to "sue everybody" to avoid missing someone important and thus losing the case later. He said he knew he would be able to remove the errant filings, if any, after the statute of limitations had expired, but he wouldn't be able to add anyone. Dixie Flag just happened to be one of the misfires, the result of imperfect information available at the time the case was filed.
If Pete Van de Putte's insurance company had simply let him fight the suit, he would likely have been dropped from the case pretty quickly and moved on. Instead, he became the poster child for products liability law reform. Ironically, Van de Putte now thinks that at least in Texas, tort reform has gone too far, in part because his house developed a toxic mold problem, and his experience hasn't made him any fonder of insurance companies...