Elsewhere in your Journal, you report that a woman who was killed in a drunk-driving road accident got awarded $27 million of which over $5 million each had to be paid by a car rental company and an insurer, whose negligence anyway was highly questionable. Here we have a case where a doctor in gross dereliction of professional duty has allowed a man to die an extremely painful death at the end of a couple of years of pain and suffering who gets off with damages of less than $1 million. So long as the US persists in having juries involved in civil cases and allows lawyers to perform in court in a manner that would be the envy of most of Hollywood, awards in US courts will continue to be a lottery and have little to do with the degree of negigence or indeed with the injury suffered.
Elsewhere in your Journal, you report that a woman who was killed in a drunk-driving road accident got awarded $27 million of which over $5 million each had to be paid by a car rental company and an insurer, whose negligence anyway was highly questionable. Here we have a case where a doctor in gross dereliction of professional duty has allowed a man to die an extremely painful death at the end of a couple of years of pain and suffering who gets off with damages of less than $1 million. So long as the US persists in having juries involved in civil cases and allows lawyers to perform in court in a manner that would be the envy of most of Hollywood, awards in US courts will continue to be a lottery and have little to do with the degree of negigence or indeed with the injury suffered.