There’s an interesting dichotomy regarding the public’s perception of lawsuits in America. On one hand, we love the little guys, Erin Brockovich, and the myriad crusaders for justice in John Grisham’s novels. We hate “big tobacco”, and cheer multibillion dollar settlements in the tobacco litigation. Americans, as a general rule, are distrustful of big corporations. The accounting scandals on Wall Street have left the public with the perception that the bigger the company, the deeper the corruption – remember Enron, Tyco, and Worldcom?
We’re enraged when we hear about companies that put the bottom line ahead of the safety of their customers. Yet, despite our predilection to root for the underdog, many Americans support tort reform.
What is a tort, and what is a tort reform? The classic legal textbook about Torts is called Prosser and Keeton on Torts. In that book, one definition offered of a tort is a “civil crime”; an act that is illegal, but is not criminal. Perhaps the most common type of a tort is an auto accident. Medical malpractice suits are also torts. Tort reform is the effort to “reform” lawsuits so as to prevent “runaway verdicts” that range into the millions of dollars.
Often, tort reform, or “tort deform” as its detractors call it, revolves around setting limits of awards for “noneconomic damages”. Noneconomic damages include things like pain & suffering, mental anguish, and in general, anything you don’t have a fixed bill for. To better illustrate, let’s say you’re in a car wreck and your car receives $5,000.00 in damage, and you need $5,000.00 in medical treatment. You would have $10,000.00 in economic damages. If you were to receive another $7,000.00 for pain & suffering that $7,000.00 would be noneconomic damages.
When you hear about multimillion dollar jury verdicts, they usually involve a form of noneconomic damages that are called either punitive or exemplary damages. Let’s take a look at what punitive/exemplary (P&E) damages are, and are not.
First, punitive damages are not intended to compensate or reward the individual who was wronged. The Merriam-Webster definition of punitive is “inflicting or aiming at punishment”, and the definition of exemplary, in this context anyway, is “to serve as a warning. That means that P&E damages are to punish a party who did something that the jury wants to make sure never happens again, such as knowingly selling a dangerous product, or hiring a bus driver that failed his drug test. Over time, it has been found that the most effective way to deter a company from engaging in unethical or illegal behavior is to punish them financially for their misdeeds. Juries do this by awarding punitive damages, and those awards could be considered a fine. Of course, rather than the state collecting a fine, the punitive damages go to the plaintiff of the lawsuit. From time to time, juries are outraged by a defendant’s behavior and award punitive damages that are far in excess of any suffering the plaintiff endured. These verdicts are what are reported to the public, and these verdicts create the perception of greedy plaintiffs and money-grubbing trial lawyers. However, what is rarely reported are the circumstances that caused a jury to award the large verdict.
Let’s take a burn case for an example. What if a company was making $1.3 million dollars a day selling a product that they admittedly knew routinely caused second and third degree burns to their customers? What if during the ten years they offered this product, over 700 people had been badly burned – some permanently disfigured – by this product? What if this product was sold as something harmless, even common, but this product would cause third-degree burns to the skin within two seconds of contact if it were accidentally dropped? Finally, what if that company called those 700+ burn victims “statistically trivial” and refused to fix the product, even though doing so would cost next to nothing?
What would a fair award be for the callous indifference of a multibillion dollar corporation that made $1,300,000.00 per day – $474,500,000.00 per year – by selling a product that burned over 700 men, women, and even infants?
This isn’t a fictitious case. This is the famed “McDonalds coffee case”, and in that case, six men and six women found that an appropriate punishment for McDonalds was to “fine” them the profit from just two days of nationwide coffee sales.
McDonalds sold their coffee at 180-190 degrees, a temperature that they admitted no human could drink, as it would cause third-degree burns within 2-7 seconds of contact with skin. Over 700 people had been burned within the ten years prior to the McDonald’s coffee case, yet McDonalds wouldn’t lower the temperature of their coffee.
Stella Liebeck was the woman who was burned. She was a 79 year old grandmother who received third-degree burns to her legs, thighs, and genitals when the cup accidentally spilled in her lap. The 190-degree coffee immediately soaked into her jogging pants, and she was unable to do anything to prevent her burns. She had to go through painful debridements (scrubbing with wire brushes), skin grafts, and her treatment lasted two years. Of course, at the end of the treatment, she was left with permanent scars. She offered to settle with McDonalds for the amount of her medical bills, and they refused. After that, she hired an attorney, and the rest became a media circus.
One fact that wasn’t reported very heavily was that the judge reduced the $2,700,000 award to $480,000.00 and Stella settled for an undisclosed figure less than that amount instead of going through a lengthy appeals process. This demonstrates the safety valve inherent in the systems of many states: A judge can often reduce a verdict he or she finds excessive.
Perhaps the most important fact of the case is that the day after the verdict, McDonalds lowered the temperature of their coffee to 158 degrees, a temperature that takes about a minute to cause severe burns; the justice system worked, and it worked because of a large jury verdict.
But America now ridicules a grandmother who received third-degree burns to her genitals: Ever receive a piece of e-mail called “The Stella Awards”? The “Stella Awards” are supposed jury verdicts that purportedly showcase how “broken” the justice system is. None of those verdicts are real; some are laughable. But every laugh at the “Stella Awards” is a laugh at a permanently disfigured grandmother. More importantly, every recipient of the “Stella Awards” is someone receiving misinformation that may influence them to support tort reform.
The real point of tort reform isn’t to prevent multimillion-dollar jury verdicts; most of those awards are reversed or overturned, and even if they weren’t, a $1 million dollar verdict isn’t much deterrent to a company that makes ten billion dollars a year. So what is the point of tort reform? It’s to keep the misdeeds of corporate America out of the public eye. After all, if a plaintiff’s “best day in court” is arbitrarily set at $250,000.00, there’s no incentive to go through a lengthy and expensive trial if the plaintiff is offered $250,000.00 by a company that sells a defective product. Such a settlement would almost certainly be confidential, and the company could continue selling their defective product and killing or maiming consumers without anyone knowing of the dangers of the product. Confidential settlements kept the problems with Firestone tires a secret for years before the recent lawsuits. To put a finer point on it, confidential settlements killed Firestone consumers; it wasn’t until public litigation began that Firestone recalled tires that they had for years known were defective.
The real effect of tort reform will be to ensure that corporations can keep their dirty laundry private, and to place the financial well-being of a corporation ab
ove the physical well-being of their consumers. It’s a sad commentary on our society’s values that corporations will pay more money for defrauding investors out of money than for knowingly selling products that kill their consumers.
I loved your article and now understand the real meaning of tort reform. Thank you for writing it so a person like myself can understand it without having a college degree of some sort. Thank you again. kathy
Thank you for this information. I hear people talking about tort reform on the news and just never understood what is was. This article was very helpful.
Very interesting article, but does it address the wrong doings that go on in the law professions against the medical profession and how it keeps are insurance rates up and how law suits, especially frivolous ones affect how much money it costs for health care and how doctors manage medical diagnosis these days? Some kind of medical tort reform is due. I think most doctors would agree with this.Do you? Some medical law suits are well founded, I am sure, but some are not and a waste of time and money and reputation to those in the medical profession and those of us who are patients.
I think we all agree, but how do you seperate the fraudulant claims from the legitimate ones? I think we all would love to see the money chasers eliminated but at what expense to those who have suffered real trauma at a companies negligence or failure to take the moral ground over profit. I think what the author was trying to say is a judge can hear the case now and reduce payments if he feels they are not due. With reform the ones who truly need to be punished to change their ways would not be.
Actually, the documentary ‘Hot Coffee’ outlines an issue with medical tort reform; although anecdotal, it confirms what the Institute of Medicine found out in their excellent (and completely scientific) report entitled To Err Is Human, Building a Safer Health System
Here’ s a snippet of what was found out:
Quote
Health care is not as safe as it should be. A substantial body of evidence points to medical errors as a leading cause of death and injury.
• Sizable numbers of Americans are harmed as a result of medical errors. Two studies of large samples of hospital admissions, one in New York using 1984 data and another in Colorado and Utah using 1992 data, found that the proportion of hospital admissions experiencing an adverse event, defined as injuries caused by medical management, were 2.9 and 3.7 percent,
Preventable adverse events are a leading cause of death in the United States. When extrapolated to the over 33.6 million admi ssions to U.S. hospitals in 1997, the results of these two studies imply that at least 44,000 and perhaps as many as 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors. Even when using the lower estimate, deaths in hospitals due to preventable adverse events exceed the number attributable to the 8th-leading cause of death. Deaths due to preventable adverse events exceed the deaths attributable to motor vehicle accidents (43,458), breast cancer (42,297) or AIDS (16,516)
The study was written in 1999 but nothing has changed-if safety and quality were what we think they should be an earth shattering revolution would have had to occur.
When George Bush was Governer of Texas. he passed a law to cap malpractice lawsuits. To lower medical cost. but sense the cap was put in place….medical prices have risen even more then before the cap.
Tort reform isnt the answer. It takes away your right to go before a jury of your peirs. to make those that hurt you responsable for thier actions.
I would be wary of doing Tort Reform, especially if it mean implementing caps, because I feel that you are going to end up hurting people with legitimate claims and I don’t want to sacrifice that if at all possible. For example, say a doctor messed up and it caused a birth defect like making the child severely retarded, where the child would have been completely normal (so its not caused by genetics, but say a complication that a doctor caused that reduced oxygen to baby for a little while in utero. That doctor’s screw up means that their baby boy will now never have a job, a family of his, or be able to take care of himself and will need to be cared for the rest of his life, which may be longer than his parents live also. How much money should that family get for what happened to their child? If a cap is put in place, I can guarantee that the family will not be able to get the amount they need to take care of him properly.
Judges can throw cases out that he views to be frivolous, since the Judge has to rule whether or not to let a lawsuit proceed before the trial can ever start, and he can reduce the punitive damages that the Jury sets, if he thinks they are excessive. Also, if someone brings in a B.S. claim to court and the Judge decides to allow it to proceed, they will still need to provide proof in court and convince a jury to award them money.
Also, Texas passed a Tort Reform that put caps on Malpractice lawsuits. Guess what! Didn’t change health-care costs at all and they continued to rise rapidly there. It passed it in 1995 and research done from 2001 to 2005 showed premiums rose 40% third fastest in nation and Texas has one of the largest uninsured population in the nation. The Medical Tort Reform that limited Mal-Patrice suits didn’t do a damn thing, except now the people that doctor’s hurt can’t sue for as much and the insurance companies don’t have to pay out as much anymore. Great success!
Texas citizens gave up their rights to sue doctors without an imposed cap, for absolutely nothing. Except maybe it made insurance companies more profitable, since they now can have a maximum risk calculated, instead of unknown one. Don’t know if this cost saving was passed on to doc in form of lower premium for his malpractice insurance, I am doubtful.
http://iactprogram.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Hyman_Silver1.pdf read this law review article, its very informative about medical malpractice tort reform and how most of the claims for tort reform are unfounded.
Spoken like a true lawyer to be. He is functioning like a judge and jury already . Doesn’t even think about the high cost of doing business in the United States that makes us less competitive in the world because of frivolous lawsuts that get large awards.
I don’t know who is suggesting my comments need moderation in capital letters but it is a bit arrogant to suggest this. This article is totally one sided towards plaintiffs and attorneys. I take exception to that way of explaining things but did not suggest it needs moderation but perhaps it does.
[All comments are moderated. I get hundreds of spam comments per day. As long as you're legit, you're approved. - JCL]
I take exception to the use of the word “frivolous” in your comments on this particular article. How is it “frivolous” to be scalded, maimed, even killed by corporations who care more about their public image than they do about the safety of the products they sell??? Which isn’t to say that “frivolous” lawsuits are never filed..of course they are…but I would suggest to you that those that involve corporations harming their consumers with faulty goods get a loud and fair hearing in the public arena…..and that those same folks are compensated accordingly.
Thank you so much for your article on Tort Reform. I have been hearing about a bill already before Congress I believe about Tort Reform and decided I needed to know what it is. Now I know. You explained it perfectly. This article strengthens my own convictions about corporate America.
Justinian, I absolutely agree with what you are saying. I found this article you wrote while I was doing research for a podcast that I host with Virginia attorney Ben Glass. I just thought that the podcast would be a nice add-on to what you are saying. It’s on iTunes here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-law-works/id424015297
Thank you for helping to get out the word on tort reform. It’s one of those topics that the public has an opinion on, but they don’t necessarily understand what it means for them.
Take a look up at the golden arches — it says “Billions and Billions Served”. Yet only 700-some people in ten years were burned by their coffee? Yes, that is statistically insignificant to the point of being essentially zero. Coffee is HOT. Accidents happen. Sorry, but your example is a poor one.
BTW, McDonald’s served their coffee that hot so it would retain more heat while the order was expedited and carried to the table (for dine-in) or to last until one reached their destination (for drive-thru). Now my coffee is colder, sooner.
I’m sorry, but no product in a cup that hardly works to contain liquid should have contents at 190ºF. That is just asking for trouble, especially in a car.
That’s 700 people that came forward to complain and/or attempt to sue. I’m pretty sure there were hundreds more who did not come forward. And are you serious? You really think a cup of coffee needs to be kept at 190 degrees F in order to stay warm for you? You do realize all they have to do is poor, place a lid on top and give the coffee to you right..? It’s not like the coffee sits in the cup for half an hour to cool down before they give it to you. This woman and many other victims dealt with 3rd degree burns! Those are the type of burns people recieve while burning in a fire! And you don’t think that warrents compensation…? I’ve spilled coffee on myself a few times.. But I can’t imagine spilling a simple cup of coffee and recieving 3rd degree burns that require such medical attention as to cost me over $10,000 dollars! It’s insane to me that there is even a question of whether this poor woman deserved to be compensated. She even tried to settle for simply $20,000 to take care of her medical expenses due to the 2 years of medical assistance she suffered through, including skin graphs and surgery around her vagina and thighs! And they denied her that! What is $20,000 compared to the 1.3 Million Mcdonalds makes daily on their coffee sales alone? There is absolutely no need for coffee to be kept at 180 degrees! It should be at least 30 degrees cooler than that! They just didn’t give a crap. Even just one complaint should have warrented a look at the protocol for how hot their coffee is kept, especially when the complaint involves 3rd degree burns!
And then let’s not forget the years of harassment from the media and the distortion of this woman’s character through crappy journalism that made her look like she was just greedy and klumzy! This woman went through hell, and then corporate america spinned her story into a frenzy that would poison Americans into believing in so called “frivolous lawsuits” and push citizens into believing and voting for tort reform, while really big corporations were spouting lies and distorting truth, as well as making up stories of “frivolous lawsuits” to convince people to be ok with signing away their right to a fair jury.
Meg, I could not have said it any better. I absolutely agree with every word you said. That poor woman suffered in so many ways. Not just the pain of her injuries but also the public scrutiny and McDonalds refusing responsibility and compensation. Makes me absolutely sick! I posted the pic of her burns on Facebook yesterday and everyone was shocked, as was I when I found it. No one knew how bad it really was because they somehow managed to keep the real details of the case out of the media. I am not going to be eating there anymore. Greedy bastards!
Their coffee was defective. The woman almost died from the third degree burn wounds she sustained and she would have died if she hadn’t been rushed directly to the emergency room. I would say their coffee product is defective if it could potentially kill you if you spilled it on yourself. You should check out the pics of her injures some time. I doubt you will continue to view it as frivolous, they are very very gruesome.
McDonald’s said that had it so hot because it would be hot still when they arrived at their destination after driving from McDonald’s. This policy directly contradicted McDonald’s own research that said consumers wanted to drink it immediately after purchase (which at its temperature no human could consume). Some suggested that it was so hot to make people drink their coffee slow and not get a lot of free refills (I guess you could get refills back in the 90s, as I don’t think you can now right?). If that is true, then, people were deformed by third degree burns, because McDonald’s wanted to save a little money by getting people to not get the free refills.
I wonder if you would feel the same if 190 degree liquid feel into your lap, giving your third degree burns, and probably taking away your ability to reproduce… Hmm? Might feel a little different about that? Even if it was just 1 person burned by their coffee, that 1 person should not be a victim of their ignorance to the temperature of a beverage they are serving. It did not happen to you, so you don’t care.
“Now my coffee is colder, sooner.” Ding ding, your are correct, and it will not burn off your flesh either!
A good way to look at tort reform is to imagine yourself as the person that was harmed. Google the pictures of Stella Liebeck’s burns, imagine it was yourself, and tell me you wouldn’t sue. You compalin about cold coffee, but the next time u accidentally spill some on yourself you will be thanking Stella. Also, she only sued for her medical bills, it was the jury who awarded her the money in order to make McDonald’s change their policy on how hot they keep their liquids.
I can the same ‘knee jerk’ reaction re: the McDonald’s case until I saw the ‘Hot Coffee’ documentary and then read more on Tort Reform. Both changed my mind and I would not support Tort Reform or any politician who does.
People, please! The solution is simple and it DOESN’T involve explaining ANYTHING to Robert.
Just take a cup of 190ºF coffee and throw it in Roberts face! Then we’ll tell him that his claim is “statistically trivial” and that he agreed to waive his right to sue and assumed the risks when he purchased our scolding coffee; the policy is written on the cup in fine print!
That’s all the explanation people like Robert need — it’s only a “real” problem when it happens to THEM!
Thank you for explaining this in great detail ! It was Very helpful !!
WOW!!! I never knew how screwed our country really was until reading your article. It’s always about the money and the people who have it are trying to keep as much as they can even at the expense of others. If we took life as serious as we take a dollar maybe we wouldn’t be in the shape that we are. We all must take responsibility of our own actions! If you are going to do something then do it right or suffer the consequences.
require a hearing first to determine if a suit is frivolous.
this should not be difficult since the word is attached to so many suits now.
OK…. so what’s the standard going to be, then? A generous “any set of facts” standard, or a less generous “plausible” standard? Does the plaintiff get to put on any proof? If so, can the plaintiff do any discovery? Should the defendant pay attorneys fees if the plaintiff wins?
Thank you for an excellent and very eye opening article!
I worked at McD’s in high school and know they do everything for a reason. The reason for the hot coffee was a response from construction workers and others that ate somewhere else. By the time the runner returned with their food, the coffee was cool. There is another issue not mentioned. McD’s fools around with packaging a lot, again, for a reason, there is always a reason. I was burned also, so there was 701 people burned. I picked up my coffee and put the tray on my truck consul and drove out of the lot. While making a right turn the coffee flipped out of the tray and drained on my ankle, sock and shoe. I picked up the cup and the bottom was the size of a silver dollar and the top the size of the diameter of an orange, in other words top heavy, this was just after the woman was burned. My guess is this size disparity was McD’s answer to other burning complaints, they made the cup “drop proof” by exaggerating the cup shape but they made it unstable. It was the cup shape that infuriated me since it was done on purpose. When I got to work I had a huge blister under my sock, extending into my shoe. I remember thinking about the “frivolous” lawsuit.
A blister is only a 2nd degree burn. You are one of the people that benefited from the lawsuit, and arent smart enough to realize it
In the coffee case, McDonald’s tried to argue the everybody knows coffee is hot argument that everyone does, but this fell apart real quick when they had to admit that almost no body knows that it will cause 3rd degree burns and permanently disfigure you and they also admitted that their product was not safe for human consumption at purchase. Also, Stella Liebeck almost died from her injures, they were that bad and survived only because she was rushed to an emergency room. If you watch the documentary “Hot Coffee” that is being aired on HBO, they show a picture of her injuries. It is disgusting, with her thigh tissue all black and dead and they are having to cut out dead tissue and try and get some of her clothes out that has melted into her flesh. I will bet you that you will have a different opinion of that case if you take a look at her injuries. How is that a frivolous lawsuit? They sold a product that if you spilled on yourself it had the potential to kill you. You may have known coffee was hot, but did you know that it was also potentially lethal before Stella Liebeck got McDonald’s to reduce the temperature. She should be considered a hero, not greedy old lady.
Anyone here ever hear of groups like Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse or something similar to that (usually something with Citizen or American or People in the name to sound more regular joe-ish). They are grassroots organizations usually at the state level (with the first one being started in Texas) that lobby against frivolous lawsuits and want caps on money awarded against corporations and doctors. Now, let me ask you, do you think regular citizens are really going to go that far out of their way and create these organizations cause they hate that corporations get sued for lots of money? Seems odd that some regular joes would care enough to start a grassroots movement to fight against lawsuit abuse.
Turns out these grassroots groups were created by a the PR company called APCO Worldwide originally hired by Phillip Morris (Why would they want to reduce citizens ability to sue I wonder?) and other corporations mostly apart of American Tort Reform Association (ATRA- coalition of Chemical, Tobacco, and Drug companies that want to change Tort Law, so they are less liable for the damage their products could do to people like you and me; you know American Citizens), so that they could have a front that looks like regular ol’ citizens pushing for Tort Reform and not Phillip Morris, as people would immediately see that it was trying to benefit itself ( these are called AstroTurf groups, as in lampooning the faked nature of their “grassroots movement”). But, they also recruit actual citizens and get them fired up about the need to stop frivolous lawsuits and large pay outs. So, the corporations have managed to trick regular people to work with them to take away or reduce their very on rights and also the rights of all the citizens of that state. It is actually pretty brilliant (the people can’t wait to give up their rights to them), but also horrible manipulation of people.
Phillip Morris and ATRA provide personnel to help run Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (Lawsuit Abuse was chosen because who doesn’t want to stop the abuse of the lawsuit system in America sounds good, but just propaganda bullshit) administrations, provide seminars to help work on lobbying campaigns, provide funding, hand out PR manuals with how to talk to people about Tort Reform, and also provide things like slogans and talking points designed for them and current campaign they are doing. You know when you started to hear about all these frivolous lawsuits, people suing like it was a job, guys mentioning supposedly absurd suits like the coffee case mentioned above, and massive pay outs running businesses into the ground? That was these guys(assholes). Those are their talking points pushed and designed to make people think lawsuits are out of control and absurd, so that they will readily support Tort Reform and screw themselves over by taking away their ability to sue the corporation, if they ever have a real grievance. (Feeling any anger yet as you start to realize that you have been manipulated by these front groups for corporations? Pissed me off.) Actually next time you hear someone say we need to stop all these Frivolous lawsuits, ask them how many frivolous lawsuits are there every year? They won’t know. Even though there are supposed to be so many, mainly because there is no way to distinction them from any other lawsuit because their isn’t a difference really. Judges are pretty smart dudes, they will through out dumb cases and will reduce pay outs that the jury’s set if they are set too high. It is a B.S. talking point, that is subjective, so that it can’t actually be counted.
What sucks is that people won’t start to realize what has happened until they go to court and get screwed over because of something like a cap on their payout. Depending on the case, your lawyers fees may have to take up most of the winnings, this wasn’t a problem before because there wasn’t a cap or lawyers may not even take your case if the cap is low enough because it is not worth the money for them.
The current system can be abused, as no system is perfect, but I would rather put my trust in Judges (they are smart guys) to keep abuse in check for the most part than to pass new legislation and strip ALL the citizens rights down. That is going to screw over a bunch of people with legitimate claims. America always talks about protecting business, but we also need to protect consumers (you know you and me; us) too and that is what Tort Law is for and that is what Corporations are attempting to take from us.
Thank you for your article. I just watched Hot Coffee and it led me here. I have a relative that works for a group of hospitals in an undiscslosed state, said hospitals have negligently allowed BAD doctors to opperate on many people. Unfortunately losing at least 10 patients in 2 years for lack of care in procedure. If this happens in one small state and is forced into arbitration and due to tort law you or your families can’t sue these irresponsible surgeons what then? K-surah? No biggie? There won’t be any gray if they have their way. I don’t believe we can stand to let a few bad apples make us vote our rights away and make these people unaccountable.
This is a great article. I live in Texas and so I am amongst the few that actually understand what tort reform is and why it is a terrible thing. A lot of people that I know seem to have an opinion about Tort Reform and how it’s going to stop frivalous law suits.. and then somehow that is supposed to bring more doctors and lower our insurance, etc.. which is not even the truth. It’s what the media is wanting us to believe.. and who owns the media? Corporations.. so of course they want you to think bad about tort law and trial Lawyers! If we take away our right as citizens to hold businesses and people accountable.. do you really think that they are going to change on their own?
I don’t have a problem with punitive damages as such, but because they are quasi-creiminal sanctions (a) the standard of their award should be “beyond a reasonable doubt” and (2) as quasi-criminal sanctions, they should be payable to the state, not to the plaintiff or the plaintiff counsel although I guess a small stipend (maybe $200/hr for the hours expended in seeking the punitives up to a maximum of $25,000) might be reasonable
There are three things in life I don’t trust
Big Government
Big Labor
Big Business
Although if I had to trust one I suppose I’d rather trust big business because it is honest about the profit motive. Big labor and big government bury you in moose manure
Insurance companies and the trial bar (plaintiff and defense) are both part of big business
You all clearly did not read the first few paragraphs which is more important that the remainder of the story. “Tort reform is the effort to “reform” lawsuits so as to prevent “runaway verdicts” that range into the millions of dollars.” and “revolves around setting limits of awards for “noneconomic damages.” You will still be able to sue for damages, you will just have some sane limits on noneconomical damages…..clearly a good thing and I guess it takes money out of lawyer’s pockets hence, this article.
Now I understand what the Tort Reform is all about. Thank you for this information. I hear people talking about tort reform on the news and just never did not understand what it was about. Great article!
I now know why the anasthesiologist who blinded my mothers left eye was so smug and “ho-hum” about having done so. Thank you TX, CA, GA. If tort reform goes federal, there will be no accounting for responsibility when “working on” a patient! “Ooops, I’m sorry it happened” will be commonplace in the medical field (that’s what the ana’ said when all was over). I’d like to see what they’ll do when it happens to them or a loved one – watch what happens to “reform.”
Seems more than tort reform. More of a tort overhaul. The legal profession is a drain on business because so much effort is put into avoiding lawsuits. Here in Chile where I live there is no signs that say “no running” at the pool, no signs that say “skateboarding prohibited”. If you fall on the side walk here you cannot sue the city. And if you are involved in an accident you might be fined $5,000 USD. There would be no $100,000 USD punitive damages. Because all of the legislators and even the President in the USA is an attorney nobody sees anything wrong with that. But common sense would say, “Yes, there is a lot wrong with that”.
Totally agree with you. Unfortunately the author of this article is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Attorneys always want to blame the “?big bad corporation” and the “big bad government” not because they are wrong, because they have the deepest pockets.
I think this is a concise article that will help people to understand tort law and proposed reforms. However I’m not sure people reading this will understand that this is clearly biased in favor of trial lawyers and against tort reform. No one in favor of tort reform would claim that this woman or other inured people shouldn’t be allowed to sue for damages. The problem is that anytime there is an injury, it is presumed that someone is to blame, and should pay money. This is the problem with medical malpractice cases. I wouldn’t call these cases frivolous, there often is a real injury or bad outcome. However the presumption that someone ‘messed up’ , as a previous poster mentioned, leads to inappropriate lawsuits where in fact no one messed up. It is becoming cost prohibitive for many hospitals to exist in the U.S., in part related to medical tort law and all of the costs associated with it. I agree that any tort reform should be tied healthcare reform so that the savings is passed on to taxpayers and those who pay for health insurance.
Hey I’ve got an idea, If you don’t want 180 degree coffee, DON’T BUY IT!
You won’t get burned, McDonald doesn’t get paid.
I can’t believe how many people think that the company shouldn’t be able to control their own products.
Yeah McDonalds doesn’t care about you, get over it. They care about your money. So don’t give it to them, it’s really simple. Free market economics right there.
There’s nothing defective about an effing cup of coffee just because it’s really hot.
Just let the morons who pay for it take their losses and maybe they’ll learn something other than that they can get huge sums of money for buying a product they knew so little about.
McDonalds was coerced/bullied into changing its product.
Why? Because people spilling their own beverage on themselves was somehow McDonalds fault. And if they didn’t change it, more idiots would keep buying boiling hot coffee and spilling it on themselves due to their own negligence. Then they never have to work again cuz dear old McDonald is paying the bills now!
Do your research!
Greetings, There is a ton of information on real statistics for tort reform. Tort reform is pushed by the insurance companies for their own profits.
Start here: http://www.justice.org/clips/insurance_company_handout.pdf
In 2008, the average profit of the 10 largest medical malpractice insurers was higher than 99 percent of the Fortune 500 companies and 35 times higher than Fortune 500 average.
Thanks for this article. It helped me a lot. I now understand better what I’m trying to learn in history class
Can you be serious? Regardless of how much the judge lowers the initial judgment, let’s not pretend opponents of tort reform are about the little guy. When you add up lawyer’s fees on both sides, it is the lawyers who get most of the money. That’s why lawyers are against tort reform. I bet you’re against loser-pay also. Nearly every other country in the world has the common sense to have loser-pay. But oh how many lawyers that would put out of business. I’m praying I’m wrong and that you have the integrity to be in favor of loser-pay.