Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

One less Illinois doctor

“Dr. Eileen Murphy has been delivering babies for 18 years, including Governor [Rod] Blagojevich’s daughter, Anne. But on April 30 she’ll see her last patient. She just can’t afford to do it anymore. … The problem’s not her $170,000 a year salary. It’s her insurance premium which jumped to $138,000 this year. Without insurance she can’t get hospital privileges. ‘If anything goes wrong, even if it’s a possible complication, a possible natural outcome, you can almost guarantee that you are going to be sued,’ Murphy said.” (“Doctors Protest Malpractice Rates”, CBS 2 Chicago, Mar. 24). Murphy plans to become a junior high school teacher instead, according to news reports. “I am going on strike for tort reform,” she wrote in a letter to her patients. More: Spoons Experience, Capitol Grilling bulletin board. Even more: Chicago Tribune on state’s crisis (“The doctors are leaving”, Apr. 18) (editorial); Maureen Martin, Heartland Institute, Mar. 26; Patrick J. Powers, “Doctor laments loss of friends to other states”, Belleville News-Democrat, Jan. 14.

The Hartford Courant on Apr. 4 (reg) ran a guest commentary by an attorney named Henry Kopel (“My Colleagues Are Wrecking Health Care”) who is married to an obstetrician/gynecologist and who begins his column: “I am an attorney, and I am ashamed of what my profession is doing to health care in America.” (reprinted: Connecticut College of Emergency Physicians). And here are a couple more medical-liability sites we haven’t previously noted: Doctors for Medical Liability Reform (various physician specialty groups), Protect Access to Care & Treatment (American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons).

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Signed a waiver? Doesn’t matter

Courts stoking the litigation explosion: “For years, companies that sponsor higher risk activities such as scuba diving and skydiving have asked participants to sign waivers designed to absolve them from lawsuits if injury or death results. Yesterday, a [New Jersey] state appeals court declared those release forms do not bar relatives from filing a wrongful death lawsuit. … The court said while [Eugene J.] Pietroluongo [who died in a scuba diving accident at age 44] had the power to sign away his right to sue, the law did not allow him to sign away the rights of his survivors to bring a wrongful death lawsuit.” The court declared the waiver, voluntary or no, to be unenforceable as a policy matter. Attorneys, presumably deadpan, said the decision “could result in more lawsuits”. (Kathy Barrett Carter, “Survivors can sue despite a waiver”, Newark Star-Ledger, Apr. 13)(& letters to the editor, Jul. 26: first, second).

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Latest newsletter

Our latest free newsletter, summing up the past 3 weeks’ or so worth of items on the site, went out today to its subscribers. If you’re not on the list, you can sign up here for future mailings and to read older newsletters. It’s a great way to keep up with items on the site you may have missed.

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Update: German court dismisses licorice-addiction suit

Update to our Apr. 16 story: Margit Kieske, 48, who says she developed heart problems after consuming nearly one pound of licorice per day, has lost her suit against the German confectioner Haribo for not posting a health warning on boxes of the candy. A court in Bonn ruled that the company had complied with the law, which provides that special labeling is needed only if licorice contains more than 0.2 percent of glycyrrhizin, a threshold not reached by the candies in question. (“Licorice Lawsuit Goes Down the Tubes”, Fox News, Apr. 20).

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New batch of reader letters

Still far from caught up, we’ve posted four more entries from our pipeline of reader letters on our letters page. Our favorite this time comes from a reader who was a class member in a class action suit filed against companies alleged to have sent out unsolicited (“junk”) faxes. How was the settlement notice sent out to the class? Why, via another unsolicited fax. Among topics of other letters: a $4.75 million settlement payable by a Massachusetts utility because its driver tried to be courteous and wave a pedestrian into traffic, where she was hit by another vehicle that failed to stop; the case of the fired Dallas police chief who, fragile of soul, wants $5 million for his emotional anguish at the episode; and finally, a letter from another trial lawyer who appears not to like us very much.

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Male cheerleaders bounced

“The male cheerleaders who carried the 80-pound Tennessee Titans flag at every game and tossed the female cheerleaders in the air won’t be doing it this fall. The Titans and the Baltimore Ravens were the last two teams in the National Football League that still featured male cheerleaders, and now the Titans have decided to drop them because of liability concerns over the stunts.” (Jim Wyatt, “Titans male cheerleaders out of a job; who’ll hoist the flag?”, The Tennessean, Apr. 17).

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By reader acclaim: 90 mph crash, blame the brewery

“The mother of a 19-year-old killed in a traffic accident is suing Coors Brewing Co., claiming that it promotes underage drinking. Jodie Pisco, of Reno, contends Coors has failed in its duty to protect the country’s youth from drinking. Her son, Ryan, was killed in 2002 after he drank Coors at a party and drove his girlfriend’s car into a light pole at 90 mph, the lawsuit says.” (“Mother sues Coors for promoting underage drinking”, AP/Court TV, Apr. 19). For more on the escalating courtroom campaign against alcohol producers, see Mar. 29 (last item), and links from there. Update Jun. 13: case dropped.

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U.K. mulls spanking ban

British officialdom is debating whether to outlaw all spanking of children — even by their own parents. “Physical punishment by teachers was outlawed in Britain’s state-run schools in 1986 and in private schools in 1999. … Last year, the government committed itself to banning childminders from spanking children, even when they have permission to do so from the child’s parents.” The final step, now being urged by a highly mobilized lobby of purported child advocates, is to extend the ban to parents themselves. The “campaign has little to do with weighing the merits, or otherwise, of spanking as a form of discipline,” writes Brendan O’Neill, assistant editor of the journal Spiked-Online. “Rather, it is driven by a view of parents, and adults in general, as not being trustworthy enough to care for children.” (“Britain debates: to spank or not to spank “, Christian Science Monitor, Apr. 19).

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Terrorism, data-collection, and dot-connecting

Yesterday’s New York Post ran my review of Jeffrey Rosen’s new book The Naked Crowd, on government surveillance, privacy, and the fight against terrorism, a book I wish I could have liked better than I did. (Walter Olson, “Privacy First”, New York Post, Apr. 18). As I explain, my reaction to some passages in the book was to “want to lock Rosen in a room with my Manhattan Institute colleague Heather Mac Donald”. The City Journal piece by Mac Donald being referenced is here.

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Sudden acceleration: litigation springs eternal

Fifteen years after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded that the explanation for supposed “sudden acceleration” in cars was that the drivers were mistakenly pressing the accelerator rather than the brake, trial lawyers continue to sue automakers, and now NHTSA has agreed to open an investigation into claims of unintended acceleration in Toyota and Lexus models. While an earlier wave of suits tended to blame cruise control malfunctions, the new favorite culprit is electronic throttle control systems. In lawsuits over the accidents, the car’s brakes, which can ordinarily bring a car to a stop even when its throttle is fully open, will typically be said to have mysteriously failed as the same time as the acceleration defect was manifesting itself, although nothing will be found physically wrong with the brakes afterward.

“For more than a decade, decisions usually favored car companies and blamed drivers in unintended acceleration cases, but some recent trials and court decisions reversed that. Ford Motor and General Motors each recently lost a high-profile case. … A Missouri jury last year ordered GM to pay Constance Peters and her husband $80 million for the crash of her 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass, which accelerated 120 feet in reverse and into a tree while she was backing up. They blamed faulty cruise control. GM is appealing.” And: “The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in 2002 reinstated a $1.1 million judgment against Ford in the crash of a 1991 Ford Aerostar. Jurors had found that the crash was caused partly by a ‘negligently designed’ cruise control system.” (Jayne O’Donnell and David Kiley, “Technology puts unintended acceleration back in spotlight”, USA Today/Detroit News, Apr. 13)(via Reason Hit and Run). For more on the issue, see Jun. 6, 2000.

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