Dueling Polls…Or Would A Judge Sell Out for $304?
February 2, 2010
“The public wants cash out of the courtroom – and that could mean pushing out elections, too.” So concludes an article in the Texas Tribune, citing as evidence a poll conducted by Justice at Stake which found that 84% of Americans believe judges should not hear cases from major contributors and 74% believe campaign contributions have some impact on a judge’s decisions.
But the leap the Texas Tribune makes from these manufactured survey findings to the conclusion that Texas should abolish democratic judicial elections is a clanking non sequitur.
A 2008 poll by the American Justice Partnership Foundation found that 75% of Americans believe state Supreme Court judges should be elected and only 21% supported so-called “merit” selection. Even a poll released by the staunches of “merit” selection supporters – the American Bar Association – found that only 19% of Americans wanted to turn judicial selection over to “merit” boards.
In that same article, the Texas Tribune publishes contributions by employees at top law firms between 2000 and 2009. Over that time period, 1,103 individual contributions were made at an average of $304. Even Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson – a staunch “merit’ selection supporter – had to admit that “most judges don’t sit down at night and go over the list as to who contributed and who has not contributed to their campaign.”
The real problem, then, isn’t the fact that judges are changing their votes to please contributors, because Chief Justice Jefferson agrees they aren’t – at least not for $304. Instead, all we’re really dealing with is a problem of “public perception.”
If the public is wrong in their perception – as Justice Jefferson seems to believe – then isn’t the answer to better educate the public about the virtues of its judges, rather than punishing the public by eliminating their role in judicial selection altogether?
Update on Trial Lawyer Protection in Health Care Bill
November 6, 2009
Earlier this week I reported on the effort underway in Congress to punish states that have solved the medical liability crisis by enacting caps on non-economic damages. Now, Congressman Henry Cuellar – a Blue Dog Democrat from Texas – won a “pre-emption” provision that would allow states with caps already on the books to keep those reforms in place and remain eligible for incentive payments under the House health care reform bill.
Great … but what about states that are looking to follow the lead of Texas, California and others who have reduced medical liability premiums and improved access to health care through tort reform?
This “sweetener” may win a few extra votes, but it slams the door on any further, meaningful action to curb frivolous medical liability lawsuits in states that haven’t enacted caps. It also shows the outsized influence that $100 million in campaign contributions can win in Congress.
Who Pays For Lawsuit Abuse? You Do!
September 16, 2009
Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse of Central Texas has a funny new ad linking the trial bar to rising health insurance premiums. You can watch it at The Spot - a political ad blog by TNSMI/CMAG, which called the ad one of 2009’s best.
Legal Reform Boosts Growth More Than Gov’t Stimulus
August 12, 2009
This week, an op-ed in the The Columbian (a daily in Washington state), pointed out how legal reform in Texas has contributed to its relative success during our nation’s economic downturn.
Legal reform advocates, particularly medical malpractice reformers, have long pointed to Texas as a model of what works to get doctors–and other businesses–to set up shop and stay in the Lone Star State.
Here is a taste:
“[N]ew businesses and doctors have flooded into the state in the wake of the lawsuit abuse reform legislation, which capped non-economic damages at $250,000. According to the Dallas Morning News, the average award prior to tort reform was $1.21 million; now it is $880,000.”
“Lawsuit reform has had a major impact on the state’s economy. In addition to the influx of new businesses, more than 7,000 doctors have moved to Texas in the past three years. According to the Texas Medical Association, malpractice insurance premiums for Texas doctors have dropped more than 30 percent since 2003 and 15 new insurance companies have entered the Texas market. Regrettably, the federal health care reforms moving through Congress include nothing about lawsuit reform.”
Despite this good news and Texas’s improved reputation, the state’s battle over reform has not stopped. During the last legislative session, we saw trial lawyers and their lawsuit happy cronies make a full assault against the very reforms that have helped created jobs in Texas.
Fortunately, legal reform allies like the Texas Civil Justice League and Texans For Lawsuit Reform successfully thwarted these efforts. We also owe a huge Texas thank you to Governor Rick Perry who wasn’t afraid to wield his veto pen. Because of their vision and courage, Texas will continue to be a model for the nation.
Change We Can Believe In?
January 21, 2009
Millions of Americans watched President’s Obama’s gracious inaugural address with a sense of hopefulness that our nation’s political leaders can work together on a bipartisan basis to address the serious economic challenges facing America. But Les Weisbrod – a Texas trial lawyer and president of the American Association for Justice (formerly the American Trial Lawyers Association) – had something else on his mind: $$$$$.
For Weisbrod and the thousands of personal injury lawyers he represents, the Obama Administration means one thing and one thing alone: the chance to sue more companies. According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, Weisbrod was told by none other than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that Democrats will soon push President Obama to make it easier for trial lawyers to sue drug companies whose products have been reviewed and approved by safety regulators at the Food & Drug Administration.
Next on the trial bar’s agenda – pressing Congress to overturn a 2008 8-1 Supreme Court decision that barred state tort claims against manufacturers of medical devices which have received FDA approval. In that case, the Court wisely decided that medical experts at the FDA were better capable of balancing potential risks and prospective health benefits for patients than non-technical juries inflamed by trial lawyers in state courts.
According to the Morning News, attorneys poured more than $42 million into the Obama presidential campaign. Now we know that, at least as far as Trial Lawyers Inc. is concerned, this quid comes with a quo. Let’s hope that the Obama Administration understands that turning more American companies into targets for the ravenous trial bar is hardly the kind of stimulus our economy needs.
Vioxx Saga Continues
December 13, 2008
Last May, a Texas appellate court spiked a $32 million (later reduced to $7.75 million) award to the family of a man who had a fatal a heart attack while taking Vioxx pain medication. The WSJ Law Blog reports that the appellate court concluded there was insufficient evidence that the man, who had a pre-existing heart condition, suffered the heart attack as a result of taking the drug. But now the appellate court has reversed its May ruling, sending the case back to trial with “legally sufficient evidence to support a finding of specific causation” – tilting the legal playing field sharply in the direction of the plaintiffs’ lawyers trying the case.
Buying Influence In Texas
November 21, 2008
Texas Watchdog lifts the rock on the efforts by powerful Texas trial lawyer Mikal Watts to buy influence on state courts and in the state legislature – all with an eye toward fattening his already bulging wallet. In the past eight years, Texas Watchdog reports, Watts and his law firm have funneled $4.5 million to Democratic candidate and left-leaning PACs.
What has all this money bought? Mr. Watts isn’t shy about telling. In a letter to an opposing counsel in a personal injury case, Mr. Watts tried to strong arm the defendant into paying a $60 million settlement because any appeal would surely be overturned by a court bought and paid for by his law firm:
In his correspondence, Watts bragged he would prevail in an appeal because his law firm helped finance the campaigns of judges on the state’s 13th Court of Appeals in Corpus Christi.
“This court is composed of six justices, all of whom are good Democrats,” Watts wrote in the letter. “The Chief Justice, Hon. Rogelio Valdez, was recently elected with our firm’s heavy support, and is a man who believes in the sanctity of jury verdicts.”
… Watts then proceeds to list other judges on the court that his law firm supported, including justices Nelda Rodriguez and Linda Yanez.
The discovery of the letter was enough of an embarrassment that Mr. Watts was forced to abandon his own campaign for the U.S. Senate. But it hasn’t stopped him from using his millions to shape the judicial and legislative environment in Texas.
According to Sherry Sylvester of Texans for Lawsuit Reform, Texas legislators “introduced 394 pieces of legislation [last year] that would have weakened tort reforms or made it easier to sue.” One particular target is Proposition 12 – a constitutional amendment adopted by Texas voters in 2003 that imposed a reasonable limit on “pain and suffering” awards in medical malpractice cases.
In the final days of the 2008 election season, Mr. Watts and his cronies in the Texas trial bar “accounted for an astounding 97 percent of the Democratic Party’s campaign contributions in the critical last weeks….” A $25,000 check from Mr. Watts helped one Democratic state Senate candidate defeat a Republican incumbent in what Texas Watchdog called “one of the biggest upsets in Texas.”
“It’s clear to me that Mr. Watts has gone above and beyond to make certain our elected officials work for the people and not large special interests,” says a state Democratic Party flack.
Well…except for one large special interest.
Texas vs. Florida
September 9, 2008
There’s probably no more dramatic demonstration of effective tort reform in action than Texas’ constitutional amendment capping non-economic damages (i.e. pain and suffering) to $250,000. Since Texas voters passed Prop. 12 in 2003, the Lone Star State’s largest medical liability carrier has seen the number of lawsuit filings cut in half. Liability insurance, which before Prop. 12 was driving physicians out of state, has declined by 25 percent, and so many doctors are applying for medical licenses that there’s a serious backlog. Whole areas of the state that were once under-served – primarily poor and Hispanic regions – are seeing specialists come and set up practice for the first time. Overall, as this article in the AMA News details (subscription required), the state’s supply of neurosurgeons has jumped 12%.
It’s instructive to compare what’s been called the “Texas Miracle” with the deepening mire in Florida, where trial lawyers still have the upper hand, and showing up at the ER has been compared to playing Russian roulette, because of the shortage of neurosurgeons and other specialists. Trauma centers across the state are periodically forced to shut down because they don’t have the necessary specialists on call, as happened in February when Bayfront Medical Center in Pinellas Country had to start shipping its acutely injured patients to Tampa for treatment.
Naturally the patients sue when this doesn’t turn out so well, and Tenet Healthcare Corp just paid out $2 million for a Boca Raton woman who died after two of its hospitals couldn’t find a neurosurgeon to treat her stroke.
Not really what you’d call a rational health care policy, but clearly it’s working well for the trial lawyers.
Tort Reform Working In Texas
May 19, 2008
Does tort reform work? Look at Texas.
Joseph Nixon of the Texas Public Policy Foundation has an important piece in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal reviewing the stunning turnaround in the Lone Star State after the legislature passed medical liability reform in 2003 and 2005. The highlights:
Greater Access to Care… While doctors are fleeing other states due to the medical liability crisis, over “the past three years, some 7,000 doctors have flooded into Texas…”
Lower Premiums… “…one of the largest malpractice insurance companies in the state [has] slashed premiums by 35%, saving doctors some $217 million [in premiums] over four years.”
A Competitive Insurance Market… While many insurance companies have stopped writing policies in states with a poor liability climate, in Texas “over 30 companies [are] competing for business.”
Spending $ on Patients, Not Lawyers… Thanks to tort reform, Christus Health, a non-profit health provider, has “saved $100 million that it otherwise would have spent fending off bogus lawsuits or paying higher insurance premiums. Every dollar saved was reinvested in helping poor patients.”
Amazing what can happen when a state’s health care system is designed to benefit patients, not lawyers.