Comments on: Sovereign immunity, cont’d http://overlawyered.com/2006/01/sovereign-immunity-contd/ Chronicling the high cost of our legal system Tue, 14 Feb 2012 06:39:32 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Bernard H. Friedman http://overlawyered.com/2006/01/sovereign-immunity-contd/comment-page-1/#comment-1825 Bernard H. Friedman Thu, 05 Jan 2006 02:35:06 +0000 http://overlawyered.com/wpblog/?p=2955#comment-1825 I would like to embellish what Mike Tardiff said about why it is not so easy for a state agency to conform its behavior in a way to prevent harm to clients. From October 2000 to April 2005, I was the risk manager for the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, the largest and most risky department in state government. The problem with conforming behavior is this: a court or a jury says that in the single, specific case before it, the state should have done X to prevent the harm. While X might have prevented the harm in that case, if, for instance, the state child welfare system has 12,000 children in foster care, it has to do X 12,000 times to conform its behavior to what the court said went wrong in a single case. The resources to prevent any conceivable harm are simply not available. In some cases, best practices would have required doing X in the first place, but what we have observed in Washington is a continual pushing of the envelope by our courts to find new and unpredictable causes of action, with the resultant continual drain on the state treasury. I would like to embellish what Mike Tardiff said about why it is not so easy for a state agency to conform its behavior in a way to prevent harm to clients. From October 2000 to April 2005, I was the risk manager for the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, the largest and most risky department in state government. The problem with conforming behavior is this: a court or a jury says that in the single, specific case before it, the state should have done X to prevent the harm. While X might have prevented the harm in that case, if, for instance, the state child welfare system has 12,000 children in foster care, it has to do X 12,000 times to conform its behavior to what the court said went wrong in a single case. The resources to prevent any conceivable harm are simply not available. In some cases, best practices would have required doing X in the first place, but what we have observed in Washington is a continual pushing of the envelope by our courts to find new and unpredictable causes of action, with the resultant continual drain on the state treasury.

]]> By: Overlawyered http://overlawyered.com/2006/01/sovereign-immunity-contd/comment-page-1/#comment-1826 Overlawyered Tue, 03 Jan 2006 23:03:10 +0000 http://overlawyered.com/wpblog/?p=2955#comment-1826 <strong>In today's WSJ: sovereign immunity in Washington</strong> I've got a "Rule of Law" column in today's Wall Street Journal on the unique problems presented to the state of Washington by the decay of longstanding doctrines of "sovereign immunity" which have left it... In today’s WSJ: sovereign immunity in Washington

I’ve got a “Rule of Law” column in today’s Wall Street Journal on the unique problems presented to the state of Washington by the decay of longstanding doctrines of “sovereign immunity” which have left it…

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