Never mind WHY the EPI was founded. Look WHO founded it. Any outfit with founders like Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect, and Robert (“Keep it Short”) Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor under Clinton, sure ain’t my idea of objective and non-biased! :-/ Natty B.
I was surprised by the conclusion of this allegedly non-partisan group. When I checked into the further I found the Board of Directors composed almost entirely of heads of unions….
Thiis may be a biased opinion. The facts on a simple HO claim is that the insurance company spent $150,000 to put $50,000 in the damaged party’s hands… each attorney got $50,000, too. A client just won a four year lawsuit and was awarded $35,000 plus the defendent paid the attorney bills for both sides of over $700,000. The legal system has NO impact my behind…
It is widely rumored (& documented) that the cost of a claim triples when an attorney is involved. Jack’s comment support’s this, too. Maybe they need to “tank” the Think Tank!!
We have vast experience here in NYC over the past 15 years. The system is completely out of control. The cost of defense is so high that insurance carriers routinely settle personal injury/slip/trip and fall cases for hundreds of thousands that have little or no merit, but which will obviously drag on for years with legal fees mounting.
The Judges in New York State courts are under pressure to move civil cases and the way to move them is to push for money settlements regardless of the facts.
It is a system that keeps the lawyers on both sides fully occupied, and is a drain on the whole economic system.
Idiotic standards are created to head off law suits. A good example is a $8.00, 2 foot circular pink plastic blow up tube for a kiddie pool with a tiny pink blow up umbrella attached which is emblazened with the statement “Not meant as a Life Saving Device”.We all see such examples daily.
My favorite cartoon depicts an attorney at a firm interviewing a prospective lawyer and stating “This firm has a long history of bringing gravitas to frivolous lawsuits”. This pretty much says it all.
Actually, if you watch what company’s reserve on losses and later, what the actual expense and amounts paid are, I think you will see there is great merit in what is said here.
Too many people know so little about reserves etc. And it is TOO TOO BAD!!!
Contrary to what one message here says, these do not appear to be union-oriented, but minimum wage/living wage-oriented. There is a significant difference. I found the EPI mission statement on-line at http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/about and it does appear to be study of the impacts of policy decisions on low-middle income wage earners. While they do bring a clear bias to the argument, their findings beg for additional research on the subject. As one who studied in college the comparative impact of social and governmental structures on industrial development, I am not surprised that different parts of the country see the TTP conclusions in their own light. I think a comparison of regions with different litigation climates would be the next step.
When your surgeon comes in early while you are asleep to check your surgery site (to avoid your family & any discussions)after just shaking hands with the infectious disease doctor who just put in an order to put your roomate in isolation…
Wonder how you will feel when your non economic damages are capped? (Who knows what horrible infection(s) you may have been exposed to…. many of these incidents are unreported…
Judges are not Priests (and I think they believe they are) and Lawyers are not paragons of virtue.
I feel the system is out of control, and needs reform.
Countless business suffer financial burdens, that is passed to the consumer.
And like immagration goverment’s failure to regulate and control hurts all of us.
Anyone who does not think tort reform will not have a favorable economic impact is either a trial lawyer (plaintiff or defense…they both have the same goals re tort reform) or a person or entity funded by trial lawyers.
Let’s take the holy grail of tort reform…..the repeal of the doctrine of joint and several liability…..if the deep pocket is gone or limited to it’s own liability and not subject to paying for the liability of others, there goes mostof your law suits. They won’t even be filed. Certainly a significant economic impact will result from a decrease in the number of law suits filed.
Trial lawyers always want to cry about the deniel of access to the courts for those who have been injured. In fact, it is the plaintiff trial lawyer who is the first level of denying injured people their day in court. When the trial lawyer decides not to take a case after his initial evaluation, it is usually because he can’t find a deep pocket to bring into the case and he thereby denies to the injured party access to the courts, not because they don’t have a good case, but because the trial lawyer can get a “big kill” on the fee.
Tort reform will definately lower the cost of doing business and this will have a favorable impact on the economy………..to argue otherwise is absurd.
To review Florida tort reform proposals go to http://www.aif.com and click on TORT REFORM on the right side of the page. Our effort failed during the 2005 session, but we are hoping the Governor will call special sessions of the Legislature this summer to pass the repeal of joint and several liability and other significant tort reform measures.
As a busines lobbyist in Florida for the last 37 years, I have heard every trial lawyer argument and none of them are valid. It’s simply a metter of getting the votes in the Congress and the state legislatures to get tort reform and this is where the trial lawyers have been m,ore successful than the business and insuranvce communities it the past. But, with leaders like President George Bush and Governor Jeb Bush, we now have a chance for meaningful reform.
With the proliferation of the current Tort system, an interesting dichotomy has evolved within the insurance industry. Certainly no one will argue the fact that insurance companies are not in the business to lose money. Hence, as claim expenses continue to grow, due in no small part by the out of control litigation frenzy of the past half century, so does the end cost for the consumer. Actually, the legal system and the insurance industry have been feeding off each other for years. The greater the exposure for potential litigation, the more insurance one needs…and on and on it goes. I do not believe the “system” will change anytime soon.
As a busines lobbyist in Florida for the last 37 years, I have heard every trial lawyer argument and none of them are valid.
How about this one? Arbitrary caps on compensation defeat the whole purpose of justice. Justice does not hinge on a negligent company’s profit margin or insurance rates. Justice depends on full compensation for negligence.
If legal reform reduced costs, every business would agree to cap commercial litigation, which takes up the bulk of our legal system’s time and resources and makes up a huge portion of total legal fees paid.
The simple fact is the insurance industry scares everyone to think they need tons of insurance so they can make money. Then they turn around and put forth half-truths and outright lies to get legislation passed to limit their exposure for legitimate claims. (Such as a cap on non-econ damages. No one can rationally explain to me how a quadraplegic can survive on a cap of $250K for example.) A good example is WV is the Med Mal tort deform that took place a couple of years ago. If a doctor kills or maims you at a trauma center the cap is $500k for ECON and Non-Econ.
The Insurance industry and the corporate backed politians want tort deform for one reason and one reason only: More Profit for thier them. According to them, forget the injured and maimed, they are all deadbeats looking for a hand out. That is why they ignore or down play articles such as these. They know if people knew the truth, tort deform would be dead in its tracks.
The point of this article is that the tort system does not affect the ecomony the way tort deform advocates claim. Corps and Insurance Companys are obviously affected by lawsuits filed by injured or defrauded people, but not the overall economy.
As for me and my home, I will continue to serve the interests of working men and women against irresponsible conduct, either negligence or fraud, that corporations and insurance companies commit.
OK, here is a deal for you: let’s change the law so that if you sue me and lose you pay my legal expenses. Just to make sure I don’t just make you back off by outspending you, let’s cap my costs at what you pay for your attorney.
Put that in place and I would gladly let you and your attorney sue everyone everywhere for as much as you want….but you will have to have a real case and not just someone’s finger that you purchased and put into your chili…
And by the way, studies have shown that medical malpractice suits and judgements are almost entirely correlated to a poor health result regardless of the cause, rather than actual mistakes or malpratice… it has to be someone’s fault though doesn’t it…..
No, I am not missing the point. Contingency Fees level the playing field so that anyone can get an attorney if their case has merit. Average Folks, including myself, could not afford to hire an attorney and pay them hourly fees. Also, a loser pay system would also stymine legit cases from going forward since the fear of losing would scare most people from pursuing meritorious cases. (Just because a case is lost does not mean it was not meritorious. The easiest way to look at that would be to look at the criminal justice system: Guilty people go free sometimes and innocent people go to jail sometimes. The same happens in the Civil Justice System. Sometimes juries get it wrong. But we live with our results. To agree to a loser pay rule, which is want you are suggesting, would be suicide for people with meritorious cases.)
That last comment of yours about med mal being the result of poor health just doesn’t make sense to me. Med Mal is Med Mal. Mistakes happen, but when doctors do it, people sometimes die or worse.
Our Justice System works. Maximum Penalties, Caps, all these extremes are ignorant knee-jerk approaches that take away the fact that every single situation is UNIQUE along with the people involved. It is thoughtless mindless capitalism. These same people would find themselves out to be patent hypocrites should any limits ever come back and haunt them or their own.
Unfortunately, the “amount of insurance” stays the same–limits aren’t raised as often as you might think. Also the amount of premium increases actually permitted by the state insurance boards is next to nothing. So, in short, check your facts.
I wish you would read the annual statements or the applications for rate increases by insurance companies. Med mal companies write with loss ratios in the low 100s, i.e. for every dollar in premium they receive, they pay over 1 dollar in indemnity and defence costs. When you add to this u/w expenses, this figure jumps to the high 120s. That is, 25-30 cents for u/w expenses added to the 1 dollar of claims costs and defence costs.
Again, a post devoid of facts, only baseless assumptions of greedy profit seekers. Look at the facts.
Omar, how can a quad survive on 250k non economic damages (if capped)??? simple, they’re non economic…there typically is no cap on economic damages; those damages would pay the amounts required for future medical care, services, transportation, loss of income, etc. Non economic damages would be over and beyond the economic damages necessary for that person. What’s enough for that injury? Personally, I don’t see how you can pinpoint an amount; what would you accept to become a quad? What does it due to punish the defendent? It won’t make the person walk again; so what would you propose?
Chuck is so right about the situation in NY State. Here small contractors have trouble getting any liability insurance at all because NY Labor Law (“scaffold law”) allows injured employees to jump over their employer’s WC policy to the general contractor’ GL policy on an absolute liability basis. A GL renewal I did yesterday for a small residential contractor ($608,000 receipts) went from $4,500 in 2004 (with 2004 admitted carrier nonrenewing 2005 due to class of business) to $16,000 in 2005 (non-admitted carrier) and he was declined by 2 carriers and has had no losses ever (20+ years experience). Less experienced contractors can’t afford or can’t get GL insurance now. I see no change of this law coming in the near future with the NY Legislative Assembly headed by Sheldon Silber, of counsel to the large personal injury 800 number law firm Weiss & Luxemborg.
Never mind WHY the EPI was founded. Look WHO founded it. Any outfit with founders like Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect, and Robert (“Keep it Short”) Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor under Clinton, sure ain’t my idea of objective and non-biased! :-/ Natty B.
I was surprised by the conclusion of this allegedly non-partisan group. When I checked into the further I found the Board of Directors composed almost entirely of heads of unions….
I wonder why they didn’t include data from the other 15 states? Is it possible, had it been included, the results would have been different?
Thiis may be a biased opinion. The facts on a simple HO claim is that the insurance company spent $150,000 to put $50,000 in the damaged party’s hands… each attorney got $50,000, too. A client just won a four year lawsuit and was awarded $35,000 plus the defendent paid the attorney bills for both sides of over $700,000. The legal system has NO impact my behind…
It is widely rumored (& documented) that the cost of a claim triples when an attorney is involved. Jack’s comment support’s this, too. Maybe they need to “tank” the Think Tank!!
We have vast experience here in NYC over the past 15 years. The system is completely out of control. The cost of defense is so high that insurance carriers routinely settle personal injury/slip/trip and fall cases for hundreds of thousands that have little or no merit, but which will obviously drag on for years with legal fees mounting.
The Judges in New York State courts are under pressure to move civil cases and the way to move them is to push for money settlements regardless of the facts.
It is a system that keeps the lawyers on both sides fully occupied, and is a drain on the whole economic system.
Idiotic standards are created to head off law suits. A good example is a $8.00, 2 foot circular pink plastic blow up tube for a kiddie pool with a tiny pink blow up umbrella attached which is emblazened with the statement “Not meant as a Life Saving Device”.We all see such examples daily.
My favorite cartoon depicts an attorney at a firm interviewing a prospective lawyer and stating “This firm has a long history of bringing gravitas to frivolous lawsuits”. This pretty much says it all.
Actually, if you watch what company’s reserve on losses and later, what the actual expense and amounts paid are, I think you will see there is great merit in what is said here.
Too many people know so little about reserves etc. And it is TOO TOO BAD!!!
Contrary to what one message here says, these do not appear to be union-oriented, but minimum wage/living wage-oriented. There is a significant difference. I found the EPI mission statement on-line at http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/about and it does appear to be study of the impacts of policy decisions on low-middle income wage earners. While they do bring a clear bias to the argument, their findings beg for additional research on the subject. As one who studied in college the comparative impact of social and governmental structures on industrial development, I am not surprised that different parts of the country see the TTP conclusions in their own light. I think a comparison of regions with different litigation climates would be the next step.
When your surgeon comes in early while you are asleep to check your surgery site (to avoid your family & any discussions)after just shaking hands with the infectious disease doctor who just put in an order to put your roomate in isolation…
Wonder how you will feel when your non economic damages are capped? (Who knows what horrible infection(s) you may have been exposed to…. many of these incidents are unreported…
If you could even ever figure it out
oh, I understand; it’s surgery for morons. Too bad they can’t be removed.
Judges are not Priests (and I think they believe they are) and Lawyers are not paragons of virtue.
I feel the system is out of control, and needs reform.
Countless business suffer financial burdens, that is passed to the consumer.
And like immagration goverment’s failure to regulate and control hurts all of us.
Anyone who does not think tort reform will not have a favorable economic impact is either a trial lawyer (plaintiff or defense…they both have the same goals re tort reform) or a person or entity funded by trial lawyers.
Let’s take the holy grail of tort reform…..the repeal of the doctrine of joint and several liability…..if the deep pocket is gone or limited to it’s own liability and not subject to paying for the liability of others, there goes mostof your law suits. They won’t even be filed. Certainly a significant economic impact will result from a decrease in the number of law suits filed.
Trial lawyers always want to cry about the deniel of access to the courts for those who have been injured. In fact, it is the plaintiff trial lawyer who is the first level of denying injured people their day in court. When the trial lawyer decides not to take a case after his initial evaluation, it is usually because he can’t find a deep pocket to bring into the case and he thereby denies to the injured party access to the courts, not because they don’t have a good case, but because the trial lawyer can get a “big kill” on the fee.
Tort reform will definately lower the cost of doing business and this will have a favorable impact on the economy………..to argue otherwise is absurd.
To review Florida tort reform proposals go to http://www.aif.com and click on TORT REFORM on the right side of the page. Our effort failed during the 2005 session, but we are hoping the Governor will call special sessions of the Legislature this summer to pass the repeal of joint and several liability and other significant tort reform measures.
As a busines lobbyist in Florida for the last 37 years, I have heard every trial lawyer argument and none of them are valid. It’s simply a metter of getting the votes in the Congress and the state legislatures to get tort reform and this is where the trial lawyers have been m,ore successful than the business and insuranvce communities it the past. But, with leaders like President George Bush and Governor Jeb Bush, we now have a chance for meaningful reform.
With the proliferation of the current Tort system, an interesting dichotomy has evolved within the insurance industry. Certainly no one will argue the fact that insurance companies are not in the business to lose money. Hence, as claim expenses continue to grow, due in no small part by the out of control litigation frenzy of the past half century, so does the end cost for the consumer. Actually, the legal system and the insurance industry have been feeding off each other for years. The greater the exposure for potential litigation, the more insurance one needs…and on and on it goes. I do not believe the “system” will change anytime soon.
As a busines lobbyist in Florida for the last 37 years, I have heard every trial lawyer argument and none of them are valid.
How about this one? Arbitrary caps on compensation defeat the whole purpose of justice. Justice does not hinge on a negligent company’s profit margin or insurance rates. Justice depends on full compensation for negligence.
If legal reform reduced costs, every business would agree to cap commercial litigation, which takes up the bulk of our legal system’s time and resources and makes up a huge portion of total legal fees paid.
Works both ways, just that the right thinks if it’s them being biased, they’re right.
Yeah, I lose my keys too. Incidentally, ad hominem remarks are not a hallmark of the intelligent.
The simple fact is the insurance industry scares everyone to think they need tons of insurance so they can make money. Then they turn around and put forth half-truths and outright lies to get legislation passed to limit their exposure for legitimate claims. (Such as a cap on non-econ damages. No one can rationally explain to me how a quadraplegic can survive on a cap of $250K for example.) A good example is WV is the Med Mal tort deform that took place a couple of years ago. If a doctor kills or maims you at a trauma center the cap is $500k for ECON and Non-Econ.
The Insurance industry and the corporate backed politians want tort deform for one reason and one reason only: More Profit for thier them. According to them, forget the injured and maimed, they are all deadbeats looking for a hand out. That is why they ignore or down play articles such as these. They know if people knew the truth, tort deform would be dead in its tracks.
The point of this article is that the tort system does not affect the ecomony the way tort deform advocates claim. Corps and Insurance Companys are obviously affected by lawsuits filed by injured or defrauded people, but not the overall economy.
As for me and my home, I will continue to serve the interests of working men and women against irresponsible conduct, either negligence or fraud, that corporations and insurance companies commit.
OK, here is a deal for you: let’s change the law so that if you sue me and lose you pay my legal expenses. Just to make sure I don’t just make you back off by outspending you, let’s cap my costs at what you pay for your attorney.
Put that in place and I would gladly let you and your attorney sue everyone everywhere for as much as you want….but you will have to have a real case and not just someone’s finger that you purchased and put into your chili…
And by the way, studies have shown that medical malpractice suits and judgements are almost entirely correlated to a poor health result regardless of the cause, rather than actual mistakes or malpratice… it has to be someone’s fault though doesn’t it…..
No, I am not missing the point. Contingency Fees level the playing field so that anyone can get an attorney if their case has merit. Average Folks, including myself, could not afford to hire an attorney and pay them hourly fees. Also, a loser pay system would also stymine legit cases from going forward since the fear of losing would scare most people from pursuing meritorious cases. (Just because a case is lost does not mean it was not meritorious. The easiest way to look at that would be to look at the criminal justice system: Guilty people go free sometimes and innocent people go to jail sometimes. The same happens in the Civil Justice System. Sometimes juries get it wrong. But we live with our results. To agree to a loser pay rule, which is want you are suggesting, would be suicide for people with meritorious cases.)
That last comment of yours about med mal being the result of poor health just doesn’t make sense to me. Med Mal is Med Mal. Mistakes happen, but when doctors do it, people sometimes die or worse.
Our Justice System works. Maximum Penalties, Caps, all these extremes are ignorant knee-jerk approaches that take away the fact that every single situation is UNIQUE along with the people involved. It is thoughtless mindless capitalism. These same people would find themselves out to be patent hypocrites should any limits ever come back and haunt them or their own.
Depends on the line of business. In my experience, the reserves are woefully inadequate.
Unfortunately, the “amount of insurance” stays the same–limits aren’t raised as often as you might think. Also the amount of premium increases actually permitted by the state insurance boards is next to nothing. So, in short, check your facts.
I wish you would read the annual statements or the applications for rate increases by insurance companies. Med mal companies write with loss ratios in the low 100s, i.e. for every dollar in premium they receive, they pay over 1 dollar in indemnity and defence costs. When you add to this u/w expenses, this figure jumps to the high 120s. That is, 25-30 cents for u/w expenses added to the 1 dollar of claims costs and defence costs.
Again, a post devoid of facts, only baseless assumptions of greedy profit seekers. Look at the facts.
Omar, how can a quad survive on 250k non economic damages (if capped)??? simple, they’re non economic…there typically is no cap on economic damages; those damages would pay the amounts required for future medical care, services, transportation, loss of income, etc. Non economic damages would be over and beyond the economic damages necessary for that person. What’s enough for that injury? Personally, I don’t see how you can pinpoint an amount; what would you accept to become a quad? What does it due to punish the defendent? It won’t make the person walk again; so what would you propose?
Chuck is so right about the situation in NY State. Here small contractors have trouble getting any liability insurance at all because NY Labor Law (“scaffold law”) allows injured employees to jump over their employer’s WC policy to the general contractor’ GL policy on an absolute liability basis. A GL renewal I did yesterday for a small residential contractor ($608,000 receipts) went from $4,500 in 2004 (with 2004 admitted carrier nonrenewing 2005 due to class of business) to $16,000 in 2005 (non-admitted carrier) and he was declined by 2 carriers and has had no losses ever (20+ years experience). Less experienced contractors can’t afford or can’t get GL insurance now. I see no change of this law coming in the near future with the NY Legislative Assembly headed by Sheldon Silber, of counsel to the large personal injury 800 number law firm Weiss & Luxemborg.