Giuliani's Legal Eagles

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Tuesday March 13, 2007 · 7:54 AM PDT

2007/03/13 · 07:54

Of all the Republicans who've thus far declared their intention to seek the presidency in 2008, Rudy Giuliani strikes me as the one that liberals could most stomach. He's got the whole 9/11 leadership thing going on; he's sort of an old-fashioned Republican in the sense that he's comfortable with his own infidelities and isn't obsessed with what other people do in the privacy of their own homes or doctor's offices. But Giuliani's legal philosophy actually says a lot more about what kind of president he would be than whether he supports gay marriage, and in this area, he doesn't need to do much to boost his conservative bona fides.

smencimer

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Monday March 12, 2007 · 8:22 AM PDT

2007/03/12 · 08:22

Cross-posted from The Tortellini

I'm always amused at how tort reformers like to come up with names for their front groups that suggest that theirs is a broad, "grassroots" citizen-based movement representing people from all walks of life who are just fed up with "lawsuit abuse." There's Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR), Texans for Texas, etc. (Texas has a bumper-crop of these.) None of them ever has any real "citizens" in them, the way that most nonprofit consumer groups do. Read More

How insurance companies create tort reformers

smencimer

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Thursday January 11, 2007 · 10:40 AM PST

2007/01/11 · 10:40

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. Read More

Workers Comp: Lousy for workers and even worse for injured patients..

smencimer

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Tuesday January 09, 2007 · 8:45 AM PST

2007/01/09 · 08:45

Cross posted from The Tortellini

Philip Howard, the founder of the pro-tort reform group Common Good, had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this weekend calling for the creation of his latest project, health courts. Howard and his supporters claim that by eliminating juries from medical malpractice cases and replacing them with "experts" and special judges, the health care system would be fairer and patients safer. Howard argues that such a system would resemble workers compensation. Anyone who knows workers comp these days should find that a chilling possibility.

smencimer

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Friday January 05, 2007 · 1:09 PM PST

2007/01/05 · 13:09

Cross-posted from The Tortellini

One thing that always heartens me is the way the dynamic American legal system continues to confound the corporate interests trying to immunize themselves from lawsuits. Sometimes I think it must be a conspiracy by tort reform lobbyists as a way of keeping themselves lucratively employed, but it's not unusual to see some tort reform measures backfire on the very people who wanted them so much.

smencimer

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Wednesday January 03, 2007 · 12:35 PM PST

2007/01/03 · 12:35

Cross-posted from The Tortellini:

Throughout all the big medical malpractice debates in recent years, doctors' groups and their political supporters have regularly insisted that fear of lawsuits forces physicians to practice expensive "defensive medicine." The idea is that to avoid suits, doctors prescribe unnecessary tests and treatments, thus driving up the cost of health care.

This argument always seemed to me pretty ridiculous, since performing unnecessary procedures on people is itself a form of malpractice. But also, in an era of managed care and increasingly stingy health care insurance coverage, average Americans never seem to be suffering from an excess of health care, at least not in their family doctor's offices.

smencimer

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Tuesday January 02, 2007 · 9:49 AM PST

2007/01/02 · 09:49

Cross Posted from The Tortellini:

I was reading Gretchen Morgenson's column($) in the New York Times Sunday and heartened to see her give the "What Would Stalin Do?" award to Robert Nardelli, the CEO of Home Depot, for running the company's shareholder meeting like a Gulag chief.

Nardelli, if you'll recall, appeared with George W. Bush early last year at the White House Economic Conference panel on tort reform, a cause Nardelli has embraced as his company's safety record has deteriorated. Home Depot shareholders this year finally got a good taste of the paranoia about public scrutiny that the company has shown in dealing with injured workers and customers.

smencimer

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Thursday December 21, 2006 · 10:13 AM PST

2006/12/21 · 10:13

cross posted from The Tortellini:

Much of the media coverage of the nasty state judicial elections in recent years has focused on the millions of dollars in campaign contributions that have come from parties appearing before the courts. But reporters and watchdog groups, I think, are often asking the wrong questions about what the donors get for their money. While it's certainly unseemly when, as the New York Times' Adam Liptak reported (sub req), judges vote with their contributors in big cases, state supreme courts are also legal policy making bodies. Their decisions affect cases that never get heard in their chambers, as well as the fate of legislation, most notably, bills enacting tort reform. The fate of such laws can affect not just one defendant but entire industries.

smencimer

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Wednesday December 20, 2006 · 12:02 PM PST

2006/12/20 · 12:02

Cross-posted from The Tortellini

Last month's election may have signaled a hiatus in the tort wars for a while, but that doesn't mean we've seen the end of business attacks on the legal system. There are far too many lobbyists whose livelihoods depend on a constant stream of new initiatives (especially those that generate big fights but never pass).

A major target in the new year is likely to be the tattered shreds of state consumer protection laws. Read More

Obama's Anti-Consumer Vote

smencimer

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Thursday December 07, 2006 · 10:42 AM PST

2006/12/07 · 10:42

As Obama-mania sweeps across the land and has Democrats everywhere buzzing, I find myself a bit wary of it all. Not that I'm a single-issue voter, but when it comes to civil justice issues, Illinois senator Barack Obama is a bust. His willingness to buy the corporate line about class action "reform" last year prevents me from joining the hallelujah chorus.

smencimer

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Wednesday December 06, 2006 · 12:39 PM PST

2006/12/06 · 12:39

Cross-posted from The Tortellini:

If you listen to tort reform debates long enough, you'll hear a common refrain about the tort system's "unpredictability" and "irrational jurors" who can't be trusted to put a dollar figure on corporate or medical wrongdoing. Sober legal minds like the University of Chicago's Cass Sunstein and patrician Common Good founder Philip Howard argue that decisions about the size of punitive or noneconomic damages ought to be made by experts, not average Americans on juries, maybe even using some sort of fixed schedule, to bring more order and predictability to the system.

This all sounds so reasonable and rational, until you read stories like those published in the Charleston Gazette last month about coal mine safety. Read More

Texas: Magnet for Dangerous Doctors?

smencimer

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Tuesday December 05, 2006 · 11:51 AM PST

2006/12/05 · 11:51

Cross-posted from The Tortellini:

In 2003, the state of Texas instituted a $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice suits, and made it more difficult for patients to sue doctors, hospitals and nursing homes. At the same time, the state legislature abolished the Office of Patient Protection. I have long suspected that the law could make Texas a magnet for dangerous doctors looking to fly below the radar screen of the legal system. Well, I didn't have to look far for confirmation of that theory. The nonprofit group Texas Watch recently discovered that the Texas Medical Board has granted a temporary medical license to an ob/gyn who had her license suspended in two states and who was the subject of numerous malpractice suits.

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Giuliani's Legal Eagles

A citizens' movement without any citizens

How insurance companies create tort reformers

Workers Comp: Lousy for workers and even worse for injured patients..

When Tort Reform Backfires

The Myth of Defensive Medicine

Home Despot: Bob Nardelli and his fear of public scrutiny

What Big Business gets for its money in judicial elections

Tort reform: the beast that just won't die.

Obama's Anti-Consumer Vote

Why we still need juries

Texas: Magnet for Dangerous Doctors?