Bush Takes A Swing At Frivolous Lawsuits

[ahegeman 0]

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All punitive damages in lawsuits are used to pay down the national debt.

That's about the best idea I've ever heard. Probably a drop in the bucket, but still a great idea.

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There is a fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental illness'.
--Dave Barry

[kelpdiver 2]

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IIRC, McDonalds corporate made it policy that the coffee be maintained at 190 degrees (?) specifically so that people would scald their tongues and not seek refills.

That wouldn't be very good business, would it? I don't drink coffee myself, but I can't imagine continuing to buy something that scalds my tongue every time.

I believe the high temp was used so that the coffee would stay warmer longer for the customer. So for many it was a positive feature, just one that caused a lot of burns. I have mixed feelings about that one - maybe it predates cars universally having cup holders. You always run a risk holding a drink between your legs, even if you're not driving at the time.

But I don't have nearly so much sympathy for the smokers. Even back in the 50s, people knew that smoking and cardio fitness did not go together. It's a bit ridiculous for people to claim in the 80s and 90s (or now) that they just didn't know. The surgeon general warning came when, late 60s?

[kelpdiver 2]

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I have a win-win solution for that. Man, I'd kiss Bush's feet if he went for this.

All punitive damages in lawsuits are used to pay down the national debt.

I'd hate for the government to have a big stake in a court case. Look at cigarette taxes. Federal and state agencies have become addicted to the income stream - I think they make more money per pack that Phillip Morris does. What happens if the goal of making people quit actually happens?

[PhillyKev 0]

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I'd hate for the government to have a big stake in a court case.

Do you have some notion that they don't already?

[jcd11235 0]

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All punitive damages in lawsuits are used to pay down the national debt.

If I win the damages, and they are used towards the ND, can I avoid my taxes up to the amount of the punitive damages? It would still decrease the debt, because the savings in interest payments.

(hypothetically, of course)

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[nathaniel 0]

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No. For the simple fact that no doctor in his right mind would practice without insurance.

Quite the opposite, in my opinion. In principle. any doctor that willingly pays for insurance is demonstrating an appalling lack of confidence in his own skills (or, in the real world, an appalling but altogether understandable lack of confidence in the justice system).

Patients should self-insure buy insurance directly, or bear the risk of their procedures. They're the ones willingly entering into risky situations, after all. Effectively that's what's happening as the costs of insurance are shifted from practitioner to patient.

The most screwed up part is the government forces it to happen even to patients who would be willing to bear the risk of their procedures, by mandating that the other participants purchase insurance.

nathaniel

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[PhillyKev 0]

So you think Doctors should have no accountability for negligence?

[freeryde13 0]

well, in a free market society like we have. the courts are a very big check and balance for corporations. now i am an entrapanuer ( hope thats spelled right , but i am one regaurdless) so i'm all abot the rights of bussiness. but the courts are the voice for the small people against the large corporation and the lawyer is the small mans voice. it's not a perfect system, it's not pretty, and i don'e like lawyers much. but you kind of have to use the lawyers greed to check the corporations greed. there are many lawsuits that do justice to people wronged. like that movie with julia roberts about the lawyer...being brokivich or something like that.

the only way i can see to limit the frivolous lawsuits is to improve peoples knowledge of being good jurors, and trying to keeping track of judges records and making judges all have to be elected or somehow more accountable for there actions. and maybe making lawyers liable for filing a frivolous law suit.

bottom line though , is that corporations and doctors have the responsibility to act responsibly and the civil courts and lawsuits keep them in check when they don't.

and mc donalds has made billions of dollars off of all of use so why shouldn't they make healthier non fattening food. people should be able to asume they have tested the food and that it's healthy or at least not harmful.

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people see me as a challenge to their balance

[nathaniel 0]

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So you think Doctors should have no accountability for negligence?

Accountability for negligence yes. Insurance against no. Negligence is not a random event, obtaining insurance against doing it yourself is demonstrating that you expect with reasonable probability that it may happen--in a way it's like a fraud. Negligence doesn't "just happen", you will it or not yourself. [for you == doctor] edit to add (and this is important): Insurance against negligence is the opposite of accountability for negligence.

The facilities for accountability are around already: certification programs and variously public, semi-private, and private standards bodies. They just need to perk up a bit. It's quite plausible they'd pick up the slack pretty quickly to become like trade associations in just about every other major industry, and if not then incenting it to happen is a role the gov't could legitimately play.

story time:

Imagine if the FDIC were privatized, and then the gubmint mandated that all investments be insured through a private FDIC-wannabe, and you could sue your investment manager when your investment lost money.

It would be ludicrous, the financial markets would collapse.

We are seeing right now tremors running through the markets for medical service.

nathaniel
nathaniel

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[kallend 2,107]

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IIRC, McDonalds corporate made it policy that the coffee be maintained at 190 degrees (?) specifically so that people would scald their tongues and not seek refills.

That wouldn't be very good business, would it? I don't drink coffee myself, but I can't imagine continuing to buy something that scalds my tongue every time.

I believe the high temp was used so that the coffee would stay warmer longer for the customer. So for many it was a positive feature, just one that caused a lot of burns.

Internal company memos were presented at the trial to show that the reason for the excessively high temperature was to discourage customers from getting refills.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[3ringheathen 0]

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I believe the high temp was used so that the coffee would stay warmer longer for the customer. So for many it was a positive feature, just one that caused a lot of burns.

I know what you mean, that's why I'd written "the McDonalds lawsuit wasn't *nearly* as frivolous..."
Regardless, I just checked a couple of websites. Their coffee was an average of 20 degrees hotter than any other restaurant tested. This is the difference between 3rd degree burns in a couple of seconds and 15 seconds or so. They'd had over 700 previous complaints of injury, and settled at least a few cases for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The woman in question was willing to settle for much less, but they turned her down, thus forcing her to follow through with the lawsuit.

Here's a snippet:

POSTSCRIPT - Following the trial of Ms. Liebeck's case, the judge who presided over it reduced the punitive damages award to $480,000, even though the judge called McDonald's conduct reckless, callous and willful. This reduction is a corrective feature built into our legal system. Furthermore, after that, both parties agreed to a settlement of the claim for a sum reported to be much less than the judge's reduced award. Another corrective feature.

ADDITIONAL NOTE - Prior to the Liebeck case, the prestigious Shriner's Burn Institute in Cincinnati had published warnings to the franchise food industry that its members were unnecessarily causing serious scald burns by serving beverages above 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

OUR COMMENT - Any common consumer product which can cause third-degree burns (the worst kind) in two to seven seconds is seriously dangerous. Who could have imagined this risk from a cup of coffee? But, McDonald's had ample evidence of it.

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But I don't have nearly so much sympathy for the smokers. Even back in the 50s, people knew that smoking and cardio fitness did not go together. It's a bit ridiculous for people to claim in the 80s and 90s (or now) that they just didn't know. The surgeon general warning came when, late 60s?

Lawsuits filed in the 80s and 90s commonly involved people that became addicted in the 50s and 60s.
In the late 60s, my mother's doctor advised her to start smoking. Clearly, the dangers were successfully suppressed through at least that time.

Even today, the big 5 tobacco companies deny that nicotine is addictive, and insist that there's no solid evidence that second hand smoke is dangerous.
Both claims are patently absurd.
They've been waging a massive disinformation campaign for decades, and they've been purposely targetting kids for just about as long.
Was there publicly available information about the hazards of smoking?
Yes, but efforts to inform consumers were undermined and outspent by sophisticated and outrageously deceptive tobacco advertising. Advertising that was coordinated with pseudo scientific research by tobacco puppet organizations.
I've got far more sympathy for McDonalds than big tobacco.
-Josh

If you have time to panic, you have time to do something more productive. -Me*
*Ron has accused me of plagiarizing this quote. He attributes it to Douglas Adams.

[kelpdiver 2]

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They've been waging a massive disinformation campaign for decades, and they've been purposely targetting kids for just about as long.

Well the point of advertizing is rarely to extoll the downsides of a product. Just look at the misinformation coming out of the liquor brands - if young men got nearly as much action as the billboards and tv ads promised, we'd have the population of China. Consumers have some accountability, one I don't think they've met if they're suing after smoking half their life.

[mr2mk1g 10]

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The reason out of court settlements work is because layers are so damned expensive

That is one factor in it yes. So regulate fees. Here solicitors and barristers fees are regulated by the size of the claim and the court in which they appear. Different regional courts have different billing rates dependant on the cost of living in that area. Different value cases get billed at different rates, as lower value claims are less demanding.

We have a Small Claims Track for cases worth under £1000 for injuries and financial losses of less than £5000. Guess what the solicitors get paid... £80. Wonder what effect that has on people wanting to bring low value pissy little claims? Yup - you don't see many of them unless there really is a good reason to sue.

In many cases these rules encourage the claimant to bring the claim themselves often, against someone who defends the claim themselves - thus no lawyers and the costs of these low value claims are miniscule.

With regard to getting rid of Jury awards, this does indeed treat the cause. I don't mean get rid of juries from the decision making process re liability - thats not a big problem and many people highly value the concept. I just mean take the power to actually value the award itself out of the jury’s hands.

We hear about awards of millions of dollars awarded by juries for relatively trivial injuries. Now I'm far from sure how the US system then works, does not the judge then often reduce the jury award?? but the reduced damages are still miles above what the claimant would receive in most other countries.

If you took away these hugely disproportionate payouts of millions of dollars then you take away a lot of the incentive to bring stupid claims. If the payout for a couple of years of arse ache (the pain in the arse of bringing the claim) is a couple of thousand as opposed to a couple of million, fewer people will want to go through the arse ache without a genuine reason to do so.

[Erroll 80]

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So you think Doctors should have no accountability for negligence?

Accountability for negligence yes. Insurance against no. Negligence is not a random event....

In SA, I ,as a private individual, get one million Rands worth of personal liability cover by just buying a standard life & disability insurance policy. Surely that does not suggest that I intend being negligent. I'd be surprised if the terminology in the US is that different from that in SA. Personal liability cover is not insurance against negligence, is it? Clearly it would serve that purpose should one be found to have been negligent, but the purpose of the cover is liability.

[nathaniel 0]

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In SA, I ,as a private individual, get one million Rands worth of personal liability cover by just buying a standard life & disability insurance policy. Surely that does not suggest that I intend being negligent.

Not unless you start operating on yourself...

In various US States the doctor buys the insurance to help pay out the patient in case the doctor is negligent.

nathaniel

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[mr2mk1g 10]

I don't understand the distinction you're making between a doctor buying third party liability insurance and anyone else.

[PhillyKev 0]

That's ludicrous.

Negligence. n. Law - Failure to exercise the degree of care considered reasonable under the circumstances, resulting in an unintended injury to another party.


Negligence is not intentional. Negligence is taking shortcuts expecting nothing bad to happen but it does anyway.

Negligence could be as simple as forgetting to check of a patient has a rare allergy to a common medication and prescribing it for them. You can't expect doctors to be perfect, that's why it's called practicing medicine. But at the same time, if you are paying a professional for their expertise, and their actions cause you injury, you should have a right to be compensated.

Do you have car insurance? Why? Do you intend to smash into someone? If not, why not be personally responsible for any damages you might cause. I mean, if you accidentally run into a motor home, it can't be more than 100 grand or so.

[lawrocket 3]

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no doctor in his right mind would practice without insurance.

An increasing practice among doctors and other professionals is to "go bare." Letting people (and lawyers) know that they are uninsured leads to plaintiffs being more wary, because collecting a judgment is a bitch on the uninsured. We have an example in our industry - Bill Booth, who in his brilliance, now calls his company "The Uninsured Relative Workshop."

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[lawrocket 3]

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Negligence is not a random event, obtaining insurance against doing it yourself is demonstrating that you expect with reasonable probability that it may happen--in a way it's like a fraud

You can bet that this insurance wouldhave an assignment clause. Then the insurer, who paid the insured, would sue the doctor via subrogation to recover the money it spent to made the insured whole.

That creates an inefficiency in the system, which will INCREASE the costs on the system and society.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[nathaniel 0]

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I don't understand the distinction you're making between a doctor buying third party liability insurance and anyone else.

When the doctor pays for insurance, he has to pay for every patient, including the patients that are prepared to go without insurance. The money has to come from somewhere, and the places where it seems to be coming from are both doctors pockets and exorbitant medical fees for patients.

When the patient pays, only the patients that are willing to pay have to pay.

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No one intends on ever being negligent.

No-one ever says they intend to be negligent, that is inviting litigation. But the actions a person decides to take constitute negligence. What people say they intend to do is mostly irrelevant for insurance, because it's generally the actions that move the bottom line.

Car insurance and medical insurance are similar in that both are royally f*cked up by gov't regulations causing excess demand.

The difference is that car insurance is affordable to the tune that the gov't regulation hasn't yet broken the market. If the gov't mandated millions (dollars, GBP, Euros, whatever) in auto insurance for everybody, and such sums were claimable, you can bet that the market would collapse. Medical insurance is extraordinarily expensive to start off with due to the nature of the beast, and forcing everybody to have it just drives the price up further.

Demand exists only in the context of a price. At price X the market demands Y quantity of insurance. The price and the demand are inter-dependent. Artificially pushing the demand one way with gov't regulation takes the price along with it.

Eventually you get to a point where the consumer or the supplier no longer wishes to participate in the market.

nathaniel

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[nathaniel 0]

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Negligence could be as simple as forgetting to check of a patient has a rare allergy to a common medication and prescribing it for them. You can't expect doctors to be perfect, that's why it's called practicing medicine.

That is a mistaken assumption. That the market has not optimized due to introduced market defects does not prove that the market could not be optimized (esp, if the defects could be resolved).

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Do you have car insurance? Why?

State minimums. Would have none if I had the choice. I am willing to bear the risk.

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Do you intend to smash into someone?

For a person to have insurance effectively diminishes the cost of smashing into someone. It gets back to the risk homeostasis idea. Insurance reduces risk, so by purchasing insurance a population that maintains risk homeostasis is expected re-increase its risk correspondingly. The stated intent of individual participants is irrelevant.

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If not, why not be personally responsible for any damages you might cause.

I'd prefer it that way.

nathaniel

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[mr2mk1g 10]

I'm not altogether sure you understand what you're saying.

If the patient doesn't take out medical insurance, and the Doctor doesn't take it out who pays if he's negligent? It comes out of the doctors own pocket.

Remember "negligence" is as good as legalease for "accident"... if the doctor has an accident that causes injury he is liable for all the consequences. That means $$$... where medical errors are concerned that can often mean lots and lots of $$$... that's why insurance is expensive - the payouts are high.

What happens is the Doctor has an accident and the patient suffers harm? (we all make mistakes - no one is perfect). The answer is the patient can then sue. They might even have to sue - they may be wheelchair bound and unable to work because of a tiny little accident meaning they have pretty much no choice.

Even if the patient does have medical insurance the that insurance company simply then sues the doctor who was negligent. Result is the uninsured doctor loses his house and BMW. Result is no one wants to be an uninsured doctor. Result is all the doctors take out third party liability insurance because they chose to... that or the take the risk.

...or you end up with no doctors because no one is willing to take the risk.

[PhillyKev 0]

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Insurance reduces risk,

No, it does not. Insurance distributes risk among a pool. It does not change the level of risk one bit.

Sure, you'd rather be personally responsible. But do you have 100grand laying around? What if you cause that much damage in a car accident where you're found to be at fault? The injured party should have to wait 30 years to collect?

If you do have that kind of money laying around, every state has provisions for self insuring.

[mr2mk1g 10]

Risk homeostasis for uninsured doctors is doctors not performing difficult or risky operations.

Would you rather people were not afforded the operations that could save their lives?

Remember having the patient take out their own insurance is not an option - their insurance co will simply sue the doctor - end result doctor won't carry out the operation.

[PhillyKev 0]

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That is a mistaken assumption. That the market has not optimized due to introduced market defects does not prove that the market could not be optimized (esp, if the defects could be resolved).

What the hell does that mean in relation to a doctor making a mistake? Are you actually suggesting that if we get rid of insurance, doctors will suddenly become infallible?

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For a person to have insurance effectively diminishes the cost of smashing into someone. It gets back to the risk homeostasis idea. Insurance reduces risk, so by purchasing insurance a population that maintains risk homeostasis is expected re-increase its risk correspondingly. The stated intent of individual participants is irrelevant.

So, you go around driving recklessly because you have insurance? Your thoughts on this subject matter, while interesting in a purely philosophical sense, have no relation to the real world.

Doctors are not more careless because they have insurance. Neither are drivers. Hell, as a matter of fact, someone with out auto insurance has less to lose. If you have no money, no assets, and no insurance, you have nothing to lose. The person with insurance will likely want to retain it and face increased premiums.

Not to mention the fact that people get hurt in accidents.