Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for 2009

A reminder on comments moderation

Comments on this site are often automatically held for moderation, and appear after they are approved. Unfortunately, in a relatively small number of cases they get caught in the spam-comments filter. For reasons I’ve never been able to figure out, the software seems to take a dislike to certain commenters and throws most or all of their comments into the spam file, even though I never see anything visibly wrong with the content of the comments and even though the software is supposed to assign positive weight to being a previously approved commenter.

When it runs heavy, comment spam can amount to many hundreds of spams a day, which defeats the hope of sifting through them individually in search of legitimate comments, and means I just wind up deleting them in bulk. When the flow is light, as at the moment, I do try to make this effort, and sure enough two legitimate comments just showed up that had been wrongly marked as spam over the past day or two.

If your comment never posts, even though it’s innocuous or constructive, there’s a good chance this is why.

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“Obama’s medical malpractice opportunity”

“In his speech tonight, the president shouldn’t forget tort reform.” (John Avlon of the Manhattan Institute, City Journal).

P.S. Maybe he was listening. In his speech tonight, Obama made a non-trivial gesture toward critics’ views on the subject, acknowledging that defensive medicine drives up costs and “prompting an eruption of applause from Republicans at Wednesday’s joint session of Congress.” [UPI]. From the same article:

“I know that the (George W.) Bush administration considered authorizing demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues,” Obama said. “It’s a good idea, and I am directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services (Kathleen Sebelius) to move forward on this initiative.”

On the politics of the gesture, see Jake Tapper/ABC, news-side WSJ (cross-posted from Point of Law).

Some reactions: Dr. Wes notices language recycled from the med-mal plan championed earlier by then-Sen. Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) My reaction? I think trying a bunch of demonstration projects to see how they work is actually one of the better reform ideas at the federal level, but obviously a great deal depends on how the demonstration projects are picked and designed. Projects might be selected from a list of ideas pre-vetted for acceptability to the litigation lobby, or at worst might even be designed to fail. I agree with Ron Miller: when it comes to actual policy, “Let’s just say President Obama is keeping his options open.” (bumped Thurs. a.m.)

And more: okay, maybe I gave the President too much credit above on having acknowledged the costs of defensive medicine: his exact wording was “defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs” (emphasis added). Ramesh Ponnuru: “A demonstration project for med-mal reform — don’t we already have one, called Texas?” Carter Wood notes that demonstration projects on med-mal reform have been shot down by Congressional Democrats in recent years. Dan Pero calls the gesture an “olive twig“. And from commenter Jack Wilson: “How come tort reform is the only part of this plan that needs to go through a demonstration project?”

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Westport’s wall woes

$150,000 in legal costs to defend challenges to a newly constructed stone wall is admittedly on the high side, but it points up a wider problem that besets the much-envied Connecticut community:

…the dispute opens a window into life in a wealthy suburb, where neighbors have enough money to fight for years over an issue that may have been quickly resolved in a less well-off town. In fact, Westport officials say such cases are not all that unusual.

“More than 50 percent of my day is dealing with these disputes,” said Gordon Joseloff, the first selectman. “In Westport, the people are very wealthy, and at the first indication of anything, they’ll threaten or file a lawsuit.”

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State senate shootout in Florida

Next Tuesday Jacksonville-area Republican voters will vote in a primary to fill a state senate vacancy, with a leading candidate being John Thrasher, who was instrumental in helping the administration of Gov. Jeb Bush steer liability reform through the legislature in 1999. As a result, Thrasher has drawn frenetic attack ads from the state’s personal injury bar and its allies, including a group calling itself Conservative Citizens for Justice, which turns out to be led by a past president of the state’s AAJ affiliate, the Florida Justice Association. [Dan Pero, American Courthouse; Times-Union and more; Jacksonville Observer] In response, Jeb Bush has cut a TV ad for Thrasher pointedly directed at the lawyers. [Miami Herald]

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September 9 roundup

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“Canada keeps malpractice cost in check”

Susan Taylor Martin in the St. Petersburg Times has some striking numbers:

For neurosurgeons in Miami, the annual cost of medical malpractice insurance is astronomical — $237,000, far more than the median price of a house.

In Toronto, a neurosurgeon pays about $29,200 for coverage. It’s even less in Montreal ($20,600) and Vancouver ($10,650).

Among the reasons why: in 1978 the Canadian Supreme Court imposed (on its own) nationwide limits on pain-and-suffering recoveries, adjusted for inflation and now just over $300,000. A single mutual insurer covers most doctors and takes an aggressive approach to defending claims. Most cases are tried before judges. Billboard and TV advertising by lawyers is much less prevalent in Canada. And so forth — all aside from the loser-pays principle.

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