Tuesday, September 14, 2004
It's fun to hate trial lawyers
Until you need one (actually, I suspect people who need trial lawyers hate them even more than people who don't).
Jesse at Pandagon comments on an LA Times story about the insurance industry's campaign against trial lawyers. The GOP has been relentlessly hammering trial lawyers for a while, blaming them for lost jobs, higher health care costs, the deficit, and terrorism. OK, maybe not the last two, yet . . .
Federal tort "reform" seems to me to be a significant intrusion of the federal government into an area traditionally reserved to the states - tort law - but Bush has stopped pretending to care about states' rights since being elected. Besides, it's just politically correct to belittle, insult, and blame trial lawyers. However, I am informed and believe that doctors themselves sometimes engage the services of dreaded trial lawyers.
A while back (a little over a year ago) a jury awarded the largest jury verdict in the history of Georgetown County, South Carolina. Two-plus million dollars. The plaintiffs were a doctor, a local obstetrician/gynecologist, and her husband. The defendant against whom the verdict was rendered was one of the major household termite extermination companies; the doctor and her husband alleged serious damage to their multi-million dollar home in Debordieu Colony as a result of the termite company's failure to find or treat a termite infestation.
So, the doctor and her husband hired a trial lawyer. And they sued the termite company. And won a couple million dollars.
If the termite company's negligence cost the doctor and her husband a couple of million dollars in damages, then I say, more power to'em. I'm glad they were able to find themselves a competent attorney who could help them recover some of their losses.
I thought about this verdict later on when I saw a sizable ad in the local newspaper, taken out by this doctor's practice group, urging people to write their state legislators and urge them to adopt liability caps. For doctors. Not for termite extermination companies.
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Until you need one (actually, I suspect people who need trial lawyers hate them even more than people who don't).
Jesse at Pandagon comments on an LA Times story about the insurance industry's campaign against trial lawyers. The GOP has been relentlessly hammering trial lawyers for a while, blaming them for lost jobs, higher health care costs, the deficit, and terrorism. OK, maybe not the last two, yet . . .
Federal tort "reform" seems to me to be a significant intrusion of the federal government into an area traditionally reserved to the states - tort law - but Bush has stopped pretending to care about states' rights since being elected. Besides, it's just politically correct to belittle, insult, and blame trial lawyers. However, I am informed and believe that doctors themselves sometimes engage the services of dreaded trial lawyers.
A while back (a little over a year ago) a jury awarded the largest jury verdict in the history of Georgetown County, South Carolina. Two-plus million dollars. The plaintiffs were a doctor, a local obstetrician/gynecologist, and her husband. The defendant against whom the verdict was rendered was one of the major household termite extermination companies; the doctor and her husband alleged serious damage to their multi-million dollar home in Debordieu Colony as a result of the termite company's failure to find or treat a termite infestation.
So, the doctor and her husband hired a trial lawyer. And they sued the termite company. And won a couple million dollars.
If the termite company's negligence cost the doctor and her husband a couple of million dollars in damages, then I say, more power to'em. I'm glad they were able to find themselves a competent attorney who could help them recover some of their losses.
I thought about this verdict later on when I saw a sizable ad in the local newspaper, taken out by this doctor's practice group, urging people to write their state legislators and urge them to adopt liability caps. For doctors. Not for termite extermination companies.
