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  • From: "Common Sense Foundation" <david@common-sense.org>
  • To: <common-sense@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Consider This: Tort Reform and Race
  • Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 17:50:33 -0500

Consider This...


TORT REFORM AND RACE


Sometimes the easiest targets are the ones that can't fight back.

When political figures demonize "frivolous lawsuits," they're bashing a
convenient bugbear. News reports tend to sensationalize large jury
awards to those who have suffered. Stories like these help feed the
misguided tort reform movement, which seeks to place an arbitrary cap on
pain-and-suffering awards to limit the liability and protect the profits
of large insurance companies.

There's more at stake than just money, however.

A new report just released by the Center for Justice and Democracy (CJD)
has found that the national tort reform movement may be targeting racial
minorities in its condemnation of the American civil litigation system.
Such sobering news should give pause to those who would push tort reform
measures in the N.C. General Assembly.

The CJD study found that groups like the American Tort Reform
Association (ATRA), leaders in the tort reform movement, have focused
their attacks primarily on jurisdictions that are dominated by people of
color. A recent ATRA report, entitled "Bringing Justice To Judicial
Hellholes," identified "hellholes" as jurisdictions that were too
"plaintiff-friendly." Unfortunately, the "hellholes" were so identified
based entirely on anecdotal information, and most of those jurisdictions
had majority non-white populations.

CJD also argues that since minorities are statistically less likely to
get access to adequate health care, they therefore stand to lose the
most from tort reform, since bad doctors will theoretically have fewer
checks on their malpractice if caps are in place.

It's bad enough that the primary purveyors of lawsuit caps have little
or no statistical evidence to support their crusades, having to rely on
a few trumped-up stories. It's worse that these efforts are now shown to
focus on people of color and work to their detriment.

The most direct misfortune brought about by tort reformers, however, may
be their disparaging of attorneys and their ruthless co-opting of the
noble medical profession. Doctors deserve better, and distracting them
with misleading anecdotes helps no one.

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  • Consider This: Tort Reform and Race, Common Sense Foundation, 03/12/2004

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