You assume that a jury would have the opportunity to award economic damages. Abbott was jogging by a tree when it fell on him due to a strong wind. Believe me, that sort of lawsuit would not survive past summary judgment these days based on the current premises liability laws that have come into existence since insurance companies and big business started controlling electoral politics in Texas.
Originally Posted by timpage
If a tree fell on you when you were on someone's property, why wouldn't you get to a jury? What specific changes to premises liability can you cite that would prevent you from, say, suing Kroger if you slipped on cooking oil from a broken bottle? The reduction in cases going to court stems from the lessened threat of exorbitant jury verdicts. Defendants know that damages are capped on pain and suffering, so the jury award will ultimately be tied more closely to the provable damages - medical bills, lost wages, etc. Since jury awards are more objectively verifiable in advance, then plaintiffs are more inclined to settle.
If I had to make one change, I would make reasonable lawyer's fee compensable any time the plaintiff prevails in a tort injury case. That way the lawyer fees don't eat into the economic loss compensation the plaintiff receives.
And, your tired old cliché about how trial lawyers get undeserving plaintiffs millions of dollars for broken arms, minor burns and other minor injuries is fucking bullshit. A plaintiff these days is lucky to get his medical bills paid and some tiny bit of pain and suffering damages. You might find the occasional anecdotal jury award but 99% of the time the scenario you describe is a boogey man tale made up by the insurance industry to fuck you out of your right to a jury trial in a civil case. And, they have done a pretty good job of that. Good luck suing a doctor that kills you, your wife or leaves your baby a slobbering vegetable for the rest of their lives. Tort reform has essentially completely insulated physicians and other healthcare providers from any sort of liability at all no matter how egregious their misconduct. And, believe me, doctors kill and injure people every single day in this country through malfeasance, stupidity, negligence and incompetence.
Originally Posted by timpage
The problem with the "anecdotal" tale of the runaway jury verdict is that it promotes excessive settlement awards in other cases that never get to trial. Those are the cases that you do not see in the papers, so you don't see any evidence of them.
Doctors kill and injure people in every country in the world, not just the USA. And yet, other countries manage to survive without our tort system.
In fact, in the UK and other countries, they have "loser pays" systems. Why don't we? If you REALLY want to reduce litigation, implement loser pays in the US, then see what happens.
But in most of the rest of the world, since government runs the healthcare systems, when you sue the doctor or hospital, you are really suing the government. Needless to say, the government takes a dim view of that, so the folks in Europe don't get to sue for millions for broken legs either.
Nonetheless, Europeans lose income when they are hurt, even if the government pays their health bills. And they have pain and suffering when they get hurt, just like we do. And, on top of that, they have loser pays in many countries.
How is is that they survive without the threat of exorbitant jury awards, but we cannot?
And what do you think is going to happen in this country once we go to a completely government funded healthcare system? And we are, believe me. Even if Obamacare has to get completely overhauled because it is an Edsel, we are going to have a system where everyone is on some new and improved universal version of Medicare.
Both the doctors and the hospitals will have greatly reduced revenues in a national healthcare system - just look at doctor pay in other countries. So, if the doctors and hospitals have less money, where does the money come from to pay big jury verdicts under a federally run universal healthcare system? The government, that's where. Do you really think the federal government is going to pay all those verdicts without putting some kind of caps in place?
The key to getting rid of bad doctors is to yank their licenses. That is what happens in other countries - and even here to a lesser degree. Large pain and suffering awards is a clumsy and ineffective way to do it.
