My commentary yesterday on the presidential contest seemed to strike a nerve; at least it got picked up at a large number of sites, including Andrew Sullivan (calling this blog “estimable”), Tom Palmer (that word again!), Reason “Hit and Run”, Andrew Tobias, PrestoPundit, and many others. The number of visitors more than doubled from an ordinary day, to 14,353, which may or may not be a record. Tom Veal at Stromata wrote a lengthy response from a pro-Bush point of view, and there was a lot of email too, including several from valued friends who take issue with my position. It’ll be a while before I can read or respond to all the mail, but that’s true even in less busy times than this.
Michigan malpractice
Striking numbers: “Despite statewide reforms designed to lower the cost of medical malpractice insurance, the most expensive annual premium for a general surgeon in Wayne County [Detroit] reached $194,000 for $1 million of coverage — a 60 percent increase over last year, according to a survey released last week by Medical Liability Monitor, a trade journal. A doctor in Grand Rapids would pay $63,000 for the same coverage.” Both are doing better than general surgeons in Dade County, Fla., where the comparable figure is $277,000. (Sheri Hall, “Malpractice rates drive off doctors”, Detroit News, Oct. 25). More: MichMedMal blog, Oct. 25.
Window box menace averted
Wary of personal injury claims, a British insurer has sought to impose a ban on the window boxes and flower pots by which inner-city residents have long sought to cheer up their high-rise flats. According to the Norwich Union company, outdoor plants above ground level at the Bow Quarter habitations in East London are an “avoidable event” and must be removed unless firmly fastened down, which it may not be possible to do in a manner consistent with historic-preservation regulations. “Rather than dropping on heads with their cargo of busy lizzies or geraniums, the main threat they pose to life and limb seemed to be people standing on them for support, or banging their heads on the boxes from beneath [per a spokesman for a safety group].” (James Moore and Roger Highfield, “Insurance firm bans window box ‘peril'”, Daily Telegraph, Oct. 26).
Election roundup: the White House
Speaking only for myself and not for Ted (and obviously not for anyone else either), I’m among those who believes George W. Bush doesn’t merit re-election, though I supported and in fact actively advised his campaign the first time around. For some of the reasons, check the links in this Oct. 5 post. Foreign policy and defense blunders aside, the last thing I wanted was an administration combining aggressive social conservatism with uncontrolled spending and big new government programs.
Some Bush strategists have seemed confident that secular-minded supporters of small government and individual liberty — a rather important constituency, historically, within the Republican Party — would have nowhere to go this fall, since it’s not as if the record of Sen. John Kerry inspires confidence. But there are places to go, if not especially attractive ones. Prof. Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago School of Law, whose scholarship has inspired so many of us, says he plans to vote for the Libertarian nominee (true, as Megan McArdle points out, the nominee in question appears to be a barking moonbat, but the point of a Libertarian vote is to send a well understood protest message that stands apart from personalities). My favorite syndicated columnist, Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune, is actually planning to cast a Democratic presidential ballot for apparently the first time in his life (“Why I’m voting for John Kerry”, Oct. 24). Chapman quotes Cato’s Dave Boaz making perhaps the strongest argument that can be made for the Democrat on domestic policy: “Republicans wouldn’t give Kerry every bad thing he wants, and they do give Bush every bad thing he wants.” The Detroit News, meanwhile, editorializes in favor of none of the above. Finally, for balance, here’s a link to Coyote Blog, run by a small businessman who says he’s going to support Bush as a “single-issue voter” motivated by the subject matter of this website, that is to say, the need to reform the litigation system.
Election roundup: down the ticket…
Won’t we all be glad when it’s over:
* At Point of Law, I’ve got a post up tracking the current status of the propositions on four states’ ballots that would limit medical malpractice litigation or fees. The situation in Florida looks grim for doctors who’ve pushed such curbs (they’ve been outspent by their lawyer opponents, $22 million to $7 million). Voters in Nevada, Oregon and Wyoming may be better disposed toward their states’ ballot measures.
* On Friday, Ted posted about how critics of trial lawyers are getting sued for running an ad commenting on the Illinois Supreme Court race. Unfortunately, that’s just one of numerous instances in which criticizing the Litigation Lobby in paid advertisements is itself getting to be legally hazardous. In a new post at Point of Law, I list two other recent instances.
* Both the New York Times and the National Law Journal are out with stories on the very nasty and expensive battles between business interests and trial lawyers in state supreme court races, especially those in West Virginia (see May 13, etc.) and Illinois (Adam Liptak, “Judicial Races in Several States Become Partisan Battlegrounds”, Oct. 24; Emily Heller, “Judicial Races Get Meaner”, National Law Journal, Oct. 25).
* “Voters may run a gantlet of lawyers before reaching the ballot box on Nov. 2.” The two major parties are deploying lawyers by the thousand to challenge state procedures and individual votes (Miles Benson, “Voting in a Battleground State? Prepare to Meet a Lawyer at the Polls”, syndicated/Newhouse, Oct. 23).
Tasteful lawyer-ad Hall of Fame
In 2001 Brookman, a law firm in London, ran ads in the men’s bathrooms of pubs soliciting divorce business with a picture of a packed suitcase and the slogan “Ditch the bitch”. The Advertising Standards Agency later ruled against a complaint that the ad was offensive and encouraged divorce. Defenders of the law firm pointed out that it was evenhanded and also solicited women’s business with ads saying bad things about men. (“Dump the chump…”, Lawyers Weekly Australia, Aug. 19, 2004; account of controversy at ad agency site; Scott Norvell, “Tongue Tied”, FoxNews.com, May 21, 2001).
“Why are music companies suing their customers?”
Tyler Cowen has some theories (Marginal Revolution, Oct. 21).
Pixar’s “The Incredibles”
The latest offering from the ruling geniuses of animation (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, etc.) is a little bit different, as we reported Feb. 24. Notes the New York Times:
The buzz out of early screenings is that “The Incredibles,” set to be released Nov. 5, carries a considerably more middle-American sensibility than the usual fare from Hollywood, where liberal shibboleths often become the stuff of mainstream movies.
The new movie’s hero, Bob Parr, a k a Mr. Incredible, after all, has been driven into middle-aged retirement and the Superhero Relocation Program by a flood of lawsuits brought by personal-injury lawyers representing people Mr. Incredible has saved but who later complain of things like neck problems.
Mr. Incredible’s 10-year-old son, Dash, is blessed with super speed but is forced to conceal it from his unknowing peers at school — until, that is, he complains that he is being held back by the “everyone is special” ethic, which holds that kids should receive a trophy just for showing up on the playing field.
Writer-director Brad Bird demurs when asked whether the movie is meant to be critical of trial lawyers:
“I just always wondered when a superhero broke through a wall, who was going to pay for that wall?” he said with a smile. “In the small-minded world we live in, that deed is not going to go unpunished.”
(John M. Broder, “Truth, Justice and the Middle-American Way”, New York Times, Oct. 20).
A right to assistance pets
Under established disabled-rights law, store owners and other business people very seldom have a right to exclude the “service animals” that accompany blind and deaf visitors. Relatively few inconveniences ensue, in part because such animals tend to be few and extremely well trained. However, the idea has begun to catch on that persons disabled in other ways also have a right to the company of assistance animals; California regulators issued such a ruling as to dogs two years ago. Now a rapidly rising number of San Francisco residents are applying for tags for assistance dogs; the city has issued 658 tags for them. “‘The bottom line is that we’re seeing a lot of people come down here with notes from their doctors saying they need a companion dog to improve their quality of life,” said Carl Friedman, director of the city animal control agency. ‘Now we’re seeing a lot of people applying for the tags who have psychological issues.”’ Landlords and restaurants are not allowed to enforce no-dog policies against a registered animal. As for the pets’ required “training”, that “can be done by the owner and can be as simple as teaching the dog to wag a tail and lick a face if that’s what it takes to make someone with a diagnosed depression feel better.” (Rachel Gordon, “‘Assistance dog’ designation opens doors for pooches”, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 19). We were on to this trend very early: see Jul. 9, 1999.
“French drink-drive hosts cleared”
“A French couple on trial for allowing a dinner guest to get into his car while drunk have been cleared of all criminal charges by a court in Nancy. … Victims’ relatives brought the case, accusing Angelique and Jean-Sebastian Fraisse of failing to prevent a crime.” (BBC, Oct. 19).