Non-Economic Damage Cap Upheld In Maryland
July 29, 2009
Like many states struggling to prevent their courthouses from becoming ATM machines for trial lawyers, Maryland has imposed a fair and reasonable cap on non-economic damages on tort claims. Since the day it was enacted back in 1986, the trial bar has been eager to overturn it, so far without success. The latest failure came earlier this month when Maryland’s Court of Appeals (the state’s equivalent of a Supreme Court) ruled that the statutory cap applies to claims brought under the state’s Consumer Protection Act, not just common-law torts, according to an article in the Maryland Daily Record.
Invoking state Consumer Protection Acts has been a favorite tactic of enterprising plaintiffs’ lawyers eager to boost jury awards and, it goes without saying, their legal fees. Maryland’s high court deserves credit for seeing through this ploy - with a unanimous decision, no less.
Caps on non-economic damages are an effective safeguard against abusive lawsuits and an important protection for the business community. While they ensure that injured plaintiffs are fairly compensated, they curb grossly excessive, Powerball-sized verdicts that allow trial lawyers to walk away with multi-million (or even billion) dollar fees.
American Justice Partnership Website Gets A New Look
July 27, 2009
Last Friday, the American Justice Parternship launched a newly designed website.
Some of the new features include a lawsuit counter, an interactive map of AJP partners, videos to help take the edge off America’s lawsuit problems, and links to op-eds and other resources.
Check it out and leave any feedback in the comments below.
New Report Asks If ACORN Is Structured As A Criminal Enterprise
July 24, 2009
The Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued an 88-page report yesterday asking the question “Is ACORN Structured as a Criminal Enterprise?”
As the report states,
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systemic fraud. Both structurally and operationally, ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American electorate.
Some of the most serious allegations concern possible fraud in voter registration.
But the Republicans’ charges go beyond this, to include submission of false filings, covering up embezzlement, and others. Some of ACORN’s affiliates are tax-exempt, some are not. Some receive Federal funds, some do not. But funds are allegedly shifted back and forth between different subsidiaries, making it hard to track the restrictions that apply to various types of money, such as the prohibition on partisan political activity on Federal grants.
All this matters not just because of the alleged criminal activity, but because ACORN gets your tax dollars. As the report notes, ” Since 1994, more than $53 million in federal funds have been pumped into ACORN, and under the Obama administration, ACORN stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in available stimulus funds.” Even in DC, that’s real money - particularly for an organization that has now been charged with covering up embezzlement.
Republicans on the committee are using this report to call for a criminal investigation of ACORN. Given the evidence they present, will the Democrats join them? What about State Attorneys General?
On the evidence the Republicans have offered, there seems plenty to keep investigators busy for a very long time. ACORN shouldn’t get a dime of federal funding until and unless these allegations are resolved.
Trial Lawyers: The Elephant In The Room On Health Care Reform
July 24, 2009
Charles Krauthammer analyzes the faltering effort to pass a trillion dollar health care bill and finally calls attention to the elephant in the room - namely the role trial lawyers have played in driving up health care costs for the rest of us:
” … why is it … that in this grand health-care debate we hear not a word about one of the worst sources of waste in American medicine: the insane cost and arbitrary rewards of our malpractice system?
“When a neurosurgeon pays $200,000 a year for malpractice insurance before he even turns on the light in his office or hires his first nurse, who do you pays? Patients, in higher doctor fees to cover the insurance.
“And with jackpot justice that awards one claimant zillions while others get nothing - and one-third of everything goes to the lawyers - where do you think that money comes from? The insurance companies, which then pass it on to you in higher premiums.
“But the greatest waste is the hidden costs of defensive medicine: tests and procedures that doctors order for no good reason other than to protect themselves from lawsuits.
“Tort reform would yield tens of billions in savings. Yet you cannot find it in the Democratic bills. And Obama breathed not a word about it in the full hour of his health-care news conference. Why? No mystery. The Democrats are parasitically dependent on huge donations from trial lawyers.”
“Undeserved Disrepute” For Elected Judges
July 21, 2009
I’ve got to applaud our friends over at JudgesOnMerit.org for lifting the rock on the all-too-often, way-too-cozy relationship between personal injury lawyers and the judges who rule on their cases. In a post today, Shira Goodman reports that New Orleans Judge Joan Benge could be kicked off the bench after her “virtual admissions” that she awarded $4,275 to the plaintiff in a car accident case because of her “affinity” for a trial lawyer who had contributed about $2,300 to her campaign.
“I’m struggling with it,” [Judge Benge told a fellow judge], “because if it wasn’t for Venezia, you know, I’d probably zero it.”
The Judiciary Committee which investigated Judge Benge concluded:
“It’s not clear what her reason for making the award was. What is clear is that the award was not based on Judge Benge’s assessment of the evidence in the case.”
So far, we have a pretty clear cut case of a judge who seems to have acted improperly based on an impartial investigation and is facing appropriate discipline because of her actions. Good work, Shira … but wait.
In his dissent in Caperton, Chief Justice Roberts warned that the endless series of bias charges the ruling would prompt against judges “will itself bring our judicial system into undeserved disrepute, and diminish the confidence of the American people in the fairness and integrity of their courts.” Shira Goodman jumps in headfirst, transforming an individual instance of judicial misconduct into a blanket indictment of the integrity of every elected judge: “it’s not the amount of the donation,” Goodman writes, “it’s the fact of the donation.” (my emphasis) Talk about “underserved disrepute.”
It’s bad enough using a relatively petty judicial scandal to condemn hundreds of fair, honest judges who have been chosen through the good opinion of the people they serve. It’s even worse to use the scandal as an excuse not to punish the bad judge, but to deprive ordinary citizens of their constitutional right to elect their public servants on the bench, which is the real goal of judgesonmerit.org.
Lawsuit Abuse Must-Read
July 16, 2009
The Manhattan Institute’s John Avlon has a must-read commentary in Forbes that documents how trial lawyers have turned the New York City government into a personal injury lawyers’ full-employment program - all to the detriment of the Big Apple’s taxpayers. Some highlights:
- New York taxpayers spent $568 million on lawsuits in 2008 - 20 times what they paid in 1977.
- New York taxpayers now spend more money on lawsuits than the next five cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia) combined.
- New Yorkers dedicates more tax dollars to settling personal-injury lawsuits than they do for parks, transportation, homeless services or the City University system.
- In 2008, nearly 90 cases were settlement for $1 million or more.
- Many jury verdicts are even more costly. A Brooklyn man won $2.3 million after he fell onto the subway tracks in a drunken stupor and lost his right leg. A corrections officer was awarded $7.25 million following an unsuccessful suicide attempt on the theory that the city should have never allowed her to carry a gun.
For New York’s cash-strapped city (and state) political leaders looking for ways to trim budgets in a tough economy have a big, fat target: Rein in the personal injury lawyers.
Redistricting: A Peek Inside The Sausage Factory
July 16, 2009
The drawing of new boundaries for congressional districts – known as redistricting – is one of the most critical, but least understood activities in politics. The political insiders in state capitals who make the maps have a huge impact over who gets elected to Congress and how long those representatives can hold onto their seats. The redistricting process can even tip the scales when it comes to determining which party will control Congress for the next decade.
WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio, offers an interesting peek inside the sausage factory. Of particular interest is the decisive influence Secretaries of State can exert over the final congressional maps. As readers of this blog may recall, this influence is not lost on the financiers of the SOS Project, who are determined to put their partisan political allies in these positions of power.
“Merit” Selection Lobbyists Target Nevada
July 14, 2009
Nevadans will vote next year on a proposed constitutional amendment that will abolish democratic judicial elections and replace them with a “merit” selection scheme that would give legal special interest groups the upper hand when it comes to picking judges. Voters rejected a similar plan in 1988, reports a Las Vegas Journal-Review editorial. So Justice at Stake – the campaign group bankrolled by billionaire hedge fund titan George Soros – has launched a sophisticated lobbying campaign aimed at getting Nevadans to give up their right to vote for judges.
Nevada Chief Justice James Hardesty, for example, objects that 64 percent of judges seeking re-election in 2008 ran unopposed – “the worst form of rubber-stamped democracy” that “leaves the voter with no power at all,” as he put it. The “merit” selection solution: Have 100 percent of judges run unopposed and eliminate voter participation entirely.
The Las Vegas Journal-Review editorial neatly shreds this proposal:
“Their claim that approval of the ballot question would remove politics from the process of selecting judges is pure folly. All it would do is empower a group of mostly unelected citizens to substitute their judgment for the electorate’s ….”
The Battle Continues In Missouri
July 14, 2009
Better Courts for Missouri has launched a petition drive aimed to putting an initiative on the ballot to make the state’s judicial selection process more open and more accountable to the people.
As it stands today, Missouri judges are chosen behind closed doors by a committee dominated by trial lawyers. In fact, according to Better Courts for Missouri, “all of the lawyer members under the ‘non-partisan’ judicial selection system are or were on the Board of Governors of the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys (MATA).”
Legislation to require the judicial nominating commission to come out from behind closed doors passed the House last April. However, the Senate adjourned without taking action following a furious lobbying campaign to kill the bill by legal special interests and, astonishingly enough, sitting judges themselves.
Passing any constitutional amendment is an uphill battle, but Better Courts for Missouri has pledged to continue the fight on behalf of Missouri citizens. Said member Larry Russell:
“Missourians should have a say in who sits on their high courts, not just elite trial attorneys. The initiative petition is an important right for Missourians.”
Sotomayor And International Law
July 14, 2009
Today’s Wall Street Journal comments on an aspect of the Sotomayor nomination that has received little attention to date: her disturbing willingness to consider foreign law in interpreting, what is, after all, the U.S. Constitution. In a speech in May, she told an ACLU chapter that “’international and foreign law will be very important in the discussion of how to think about the unsettle issues in our own legal system.” To discourage the use of foreign or international law, she added, would ‘be asking American judges to close their minds to good ideas,’”
No, it wouldn’t be. It would be asking American judges simply to do their jobs – to interpret the law, not make it up. We voted for our state legislatures and for the Congress. We did not vote for the European Parliament or the UN Human Rights Council. If a law is unconstitutional, it should be found to be so based on our Constitution, not the principles of other nations, no matter how lofty they may sound.
That’s what democracy and the rule of law means. And that’s why the stakes are so high in the Sotomayor nomination.