South Carolina Nursing Home Lawyer & Attorney : Poliakoff & Associates Law Firm : Elderly Care, Senior Care

JONATHAN D. GLATER wrote an article on the proganda and millions spent on trying to grant immunity to corporation who committ negligence to protect insurance company profits.  

Thomas J. Donohue, the head of the US Chamber of Commerce congratulated a group of executives, lobbyists and insurance lawyers to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform.  But it is still too early to declare an end to the so-called tort wars, a decades-old propaganda movement to protect coporations and the profits of the insurance companies.  Corporate interests have won several potent victories, but trial lawyers continue to try to undo legislation restricting litigation and are pursuing new strategies of their own.

In state courts, where most civil litigation plays out, the number of suits involving auto accidents, allegations of medical malpractice and the like fell steadily from 1995 to 2005, according to the National Center for State Courts. The Chamber of Commerce says the number of megaverdicts for more than $100 million dropped to 2 last year, from 27 in 2000.

The chief executive of the American Association for Justice, Jon Haber, is skeptical of the results of spending by the Chamber of Commerce and its members to hobble lawsuits. And he defends the new name of his organization as reflecting what it does, rather than who its members are.  “The chamber’s political portfolio looks a lot like the portfolio of many Wall Street banks these days — a large number of bad bets that did not pay off but cost their members an awful lot of money,” Mr. Haber said.

He can rattle off recent victories for trial lawyers including voters in Washington State, for example, last year approved a bill that allows people to collect triple damages if an insurer unreasonably denies a claim.

In Colorado, an initiative to limit lawyers’ fees was answered with a barrage of proposals that would limit executive compensation, cap real estate sales commissions and raise the maximum amount of damages payable as a result of shoddy construction, among other things. All the initiatives were eventually withdrawn.

At the federal level, trial lawyers are pushing for a law that would make it easier for consumers to sue instead of having to submit to binding arbitration, as many contracts — for credit cards, for example — now require. The trial lawyers are also trying to make it harder for defendants to keep legal proceedings secret. “There are a number of things that are very much pro-civil justice that are starting to work through Congress,” Mr. Haber said.

The fight to change tort laws has developed into a big business in itself, with plenty of people invested in keeping the battle going.   Officials at the Institute for Legal Reform, the chamber unit, would not specify how much it spends annually on media and publicity campaigns, except to say it’s in the millions. And many organizations, nationally and in the states, lobby on both sides.

But the chamber itself, which represents millions of businesses of all sizes, is the biggest spender on the lobbying. In 2006, it spent $72.7 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group that tracks money in politics.

Anti-consumer groups came up with a multipronged propaganda strategy, involving advertising aimed at voters picking judges and continued lobbying of lawmakers. This “demonstration project" was successful enough that the Institute for Legal Reform has expanded it over the years. At the same time, businesses have become more active in state supreme court judicial campaigns and, in the 2006 election cycle, gave twice as much as lawyers did, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

To help deliver a pro-business message, advocates have hit upon a ranking system. One list ranks “judicial hellholes,” as compiled by the American Tort Reform Association, and another identifies those states deemed by corporate general counsels to be most and least friendly to businesses. (That list comes from the Chamber of Commerce.)

In Mississippi, which received the worst ranking on the chamber’s list, advocates of limits on lawsuits made a special effort. In 2002 and 2004, state lawmakers passed legislation that, among other things, capped how much plaintiffs could recover in punitive damages and in noneconomic damages — compensation for pain and suffering, for example.

But Lance L. Stevens, a Mississippi lawyer and former president of the state’s association of trial lawyers, said that even after the changes to the tort laws, the state has moved up in the ranking by only a few spots. General counsels at big corporations are not critical of Mississippi because of its legal system, he said. “It is the corporate lawyers for the Fortune 500 companies expressing their general disgust for Mississippi and their mistaken belief that we are culturally retarded.”

Corporate executives say they want limits on noneconomic damages in order to reduce unpredictability in jury verdicts. But the caps hurt the very people who most need help — low-income people who sustain injuries, Mr. Stevens said. People who earn a lot of money can claim significant lost income as part of their injury. The unemployed, children, the elderly or anyone else with little earning potential stands to recover less for the same injury than someone in the work force.

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The Atlanta Journal constitution wrote a story about a Georgia Judge finding tort reform caps to be unconstitutional.  The cap on monetary awards in a medical malpractice case was found to be unconstitutional.

Superior Court Judge Marvin Arrington wrote in an order that the legislative cap of $350,000 for noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering was unconstitutional because it gave special protections to the medical profession. This meant people injured by doctors had less protection than those injured by others.

"It is absurd to say that if you get injured by a product that the jury can decide your noneconomic damages, but if you get injured by medical malpractice, it can't," said Trent Speckhals, one of the lawyers for Cheon Park, the plaintiff in the case.

The legislature approved the $350,000 cap in 2005 as part of a civil-justice tort reform law over the opposition of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association and consumer groups.   In 2006, the Georgia Supreme Court stuck down another provision of tort reform when it ruled that defendants couldn't decide in which county their medical-malpractice case was tried.

In his written opinion, Arrington complained that limiting the caps meant that in many cases, large jury awards would be issued only to wealthy people who could point to the loss of large incomes.

"The statute effectively puts substantial limitations on the rights of the poor and middle class to recovery while leaving the right to virtually unlimited recoveries unimpeded for the wealthy," Arrington said. "The disabled manager of a hedge fund, a corporate CEO, an entertainer or such other person whose income is in the tens of millions of dollars has a claim under Georgia law that would dwarf the amount awarded in any case for pain and suffering."

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The Tennessean has a great editorial about the legislation that will protect nursing homes who abuse and neglect residents.  Below is a summary of the editorial.

Nursing home operators are begging the General Assembly to grant them special protections from lawsuits that might be filed by residents who are seriously wronged under their care.  What the owners want is a law that would allow nursing homes to force residents to waive their constitutional right to a jury trial and sign arbitration agreements as a prerequisite for being admitted, and they want caps on how much money a jury could award to a resident in a case against the nursing home.

This effort by the nursing home industry takes a lot of nerve. The state suspended admissions at 22 nursing homes in 2007, which was twice as many as in the previous year and three times the amount in 2005. Hundreds of residents were displaced last year because of serious health and safety violations that caused those homes to lose federal funds. Yet in this environment, the nursing home industry wants special protection from lawsuits. 

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Here is an interesting article about a pro tort reform doctor who has had a change of heart after experiencing first hand the law of unintended consequences as a result of tort reform.  Here is an excerpt from that article.

Dave Stewart's mother went to the hospital for surgery in April. Four days later, she was dead.
To Stewart, an anesthesiologist, it seemed a classic case of medical malpractice. After the operation, his mother developed sharp abdominal pain that she described as "10 on a scale of 1 to 10," according to her medical records.

The hospital failed to diagnose the cause of her pain and continued to treat her with narcotics. Her vital signs became unstable and she was moved to the intensive care unit, but she died of complications from an untreated bowel obstruction. Stewart and his two sisters wanted to sue, and they approached two dozen lawyers. One after another declined to take the case, always for the same reason: It wasn't worth the money.

In 1975, California enacted legislation capping malpractice payments after an outcry from doctors and insurers that oversized awards and skyrocketing insurance rates were driving physicians out of the state. The law limited the amount of money for "pain and suffering" -- usually the physical and emotional stress caused from an injury -- to $250,000.  Proponents say it discourages "frivolous" lawsuits.   The cap on pain and suffering has never been raised nor tied to inflation.

Yet a Times analysis of state court records, physician payment data and insurer financial records suggests that the cap is increasingly preventing families such as the Stewarts from getting their day in court.

Some malpractice victims and their families say the benefits of the law have swung too far in favor of doctors. Without accountability, some ask, what will keep physicians from making careless mistakes?

On average, California juries (which are rarely informed of the cap during trials) awarded $800,000 in malpractice death cases from 1995 to 1999, but the amounts were later reduced to $250,000 under the law. This suggests that medical malpractice victims and their families could be reaping much larger payouts than the law allows.

Recent malpractice premium increases may have had more to do with insurers' business models and financial investments -- including documented losses in their investment portfolios in recent years -- than with their core businesses.

Stewart, of San Diego, said he had long been a MICRA advocate, believing it was in the best interest of doctors and patients. Not anymore.

After he and his family got over the initial shock of losing their mother, they wanted justice. Most attorneys turned them down over the phone, although three agreed to meet in person. Last summer, the entire family and their 80-year-old father made the trip to San Francisco and Oakland for meetings.

One lawyer said he would take the case only if the family paid the expected $50,000 in trial costs upfront.

San Francisco lawyer Brad Corsiglia at first seemed interested but later sent a letter dated July 11, 2007, that read: "As you can understand, with a cap of $250,000, we are limited in the type of case we can take on a contingency fee basis to only those cases that involve catastrophic economic losses."

"In 1975 you could buy a house for that money, and today what does it get you?" asked Stewart, whose parents would have celebrated their 54th anniversary last month. "Every year MICRA stays the same is another year that people who have been wronged will be denied the same justice."

Some state courts have struck down malpractice caps that didn't rise over time. Last month, an Illinois circuit court judge ruled unconstitutional a 2005 state law that caps noneconomic damages in medical liability cases.

In 2006, a Louisiana appeals court ruled that its state malpractice cap, established in 1975, did not adequately compensate patients and needed to be raised to $1.6 million. The ruling was overturned this year by the state's Supreme Court.

Some families who succeed at trial in California are often surprised at how little money they see in the end.

Becky Dessenberger's 2-year-old son, Jacob, died at Children's Hospital in Oakland in 2004 after surgery to repair a foot. Her son, who was suffering from bronchitis, was given a high dose of pain medication though the drug is known to cause slower breathing. He died the next day.

In 2006 the family settled with the hospital, which acknowledged no wrongdoing, for just under the $250,000 cap. After deducting for trial costs and lawyer fees, Dessenberger, 36, of Suisun City, said the family received "a little over" $100,000.

Dessenberger said no money would help ease her grief, but the small amount felt to her and her family like a slap in the face.

"Because he was a baby, this is all he was worth," she said. "I think it is horrible. I don't think it's fair."

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