Posted On: March 20, 2006, 4:18 pm CST

Posted By: not the same LL

My my, aren't we all touchy? Perhaps we should all step back here and look at this unemotionally.

I have been in the insurance busienss for almost 32 years. I have seen crooked lawyers. Here in NY, the state even has a fund to compensate those who have been robbed by their attorneys. But crooked lawyers are not the issue.

I have seen crooked insurance brokers, but that again is not the issue.

The true issue is our civil justice system that enables, no ENCOURAGES, out of control litigation. Sometimes insurance covers this litigation, sometimes not. Perhaps one way to address this issue would be to change the system so that if a civil action were to fail, the losing plaintiff would then have to pay the cost's of the defendants. Then let's see how many people sue because they were burned by hot coffee (imagine the nerve, not to mention the negligence, of an eating establishment that serves hot coffee ... HOT!).

Here in NY, the trial lawyers' lobby has a lot of power, probably more than the insurance industry's. NY has the so-called scaffold laws (201, 241) that are quite ridiculous . When you ask state legislators about them, they respond that the trial lawyers keep them in place, despite how crazy they are.

Most insurance agents (as well as many other professionals) have to practice defensive business methods to protect themselves from lawsuits, many of which are frivolous. A lot of the cost of medicine is related to extra, perhaps unecessay tests that are ordered for defensive reasons.

I got so frustrated over the years by what I considered to be lawyer driven frivolous law suits that I decided to join them, instead of fighting them. So, a number of years ago I began to specialize in insuring attorneys and law firms. I make money from insuring lawyers aainst lawsuits by OTHER attorneys. And you should should hear when lawyers get sued! They scream like stuck pigs. It's so gratifying.