Tort reform panic on the right?

In what amounts to a panicked screed by Forbes columnist Daniel Fisher, he outlines in his recent online article that "November Election A Lawyers Delight." Essentially he is presenting the position that both Obama and McCain are going to be presented with a string of bills that will halt the steady march of the tort reform machine to pack federal and state courts with pro-business Republican's in Name Only corporatists.

As a Republican who often refers to himself as to the right of Reagan who thought Goldwater was a lefty, I have been sickened by the wholesale sell out of the Republican party to the tort reform lobby. The huge piles of cash thrown at them by The Chamber of Commerce, Manufacturers associations, drug companies, casualty insurance companies and others has caused a collective sell out that is only matched by the influence railroads and robber baron's had in the US prior to Teddy Roosevelt ascending to the Presidency. As I often say, any true conservative, or any true American knows, that our fathers, uncles and brothers didn't die in foreign lands so that we could surrender our right to access the courts and obtain compensation for injury just to save $4 on my auto insurance bill. Tort reform has been one of the most intellectually dishonest and massive campaigns to rob American's of their rights and freedoms since the founding of this country.

However, as the gloomy tone of the Forbes article points out, the corporatist, Rockefeller Republicans who had dragged the Republican party to it's lowest level in 50 years are now realizing that the pendulum is starting to swing back to the middle and that both Presidential candidates are likely to sign legislation repealing any Supreme Court decision on preemption, which has been the Tort Reforms holy grail for the better part of 10 years now.

While it's only a small glimmer of good news for true conservatives to see the inexorable march of the corporatists to strip citizens of their legal rights and capping damages halted to some degree, a great deal of work remains to continue to halt this massively funded lobby that is essentially the tail that wags the dog for the spineless Republican's who have disgraced this party for the last 8 years in office.

Comments

[Kia]

Your post fills an important gap by sharing the conservative perspective against tort reform, and further debunks the myth that this issue is about trial lawyers rather than ordinary citizens and their rights. Tort "reform" is hands down a non-partisan issue that any person with an interest in his or her legal rights or ability to fight for safe products and fair dealings with others, should care about. Working for a better civil justice system is also a promising area for bi-partisan cooperation and collaboration.

Thanks for this.

[Supremacy Claus]

I have been saying the same. The post is missing one point, however. The statutory and constitutional removal of the obstacle to compensation for the millions of victims of the carelessness of lawyers and judges with unlawful, unjust, unjustifiable, self-dealt immunities. Why is the court house door slammed in their damaged faces? What is the policy justification for immunizing incompetents, with every goal of every law subject in utter failure, save one? Rent seeking.

[Ted]

"$4 on your insurance bill"? Try $1000/American car and several thousand dollars per household. Trial lawyers have wrecked the American manufacturing economy.

[The LBN Team]

Ted,

Care to put up some of the bogus numbers created by the Chamber of Commerce and it's Tort reform division of false and misleading statistics for us?

This is the standard numbers tossed out by the tort reform crowd, with no statistical basis what so ever. Most of the costs of manufacturing jobs have nothing to do with tort reform or the hidden cost of lawyers and everything to do with bloated salaries, pensions, payroll and federal and state regulation. How about you show me the last big time manufacturing mass tort that caused a company in the US to suspend or alter the sale of a product?

Enough mythology, shows us some real facts.