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EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES
Canton Repository
January 6, 2005
In a recent Associated Press article (The Canton Repository, January 6, 2005), President Bush exclaimed "The United States Congress needs to pass real medical liability reform this year. This liability system, I'm telling you, is out of control." The President is known to tell a yarn or two, but this one is a whopper.
As an initial matter, you should be aware that Ohio has already substantially diminished patients' rights by passing so-called medical malpractice "tort reform". Any federal legislation would be redundant. More importantly, however, there is not, nor has there ever been, a malpractice crisis. In a survey of Ohio's judges, our state representative, Scott Oelslager, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, found no evidence suggesting frivolous lawsuits or punitive damage verdicts posed any problem for Ohio's judicial system or its business community. In fact, injury lawsuits have declined four percent since 1993. Contract cases, meanwhile, which are more likely to involve businesses than injury cases, rose by 21% over the same time period.
Ironically, in the same issue of The Canton Repository, another AP article appeared entitled "Lawsuit bill won't cut insurance premiums". The first sentence says it all: "Insurance companies have no immediate plans to lower rates as a result of a bill limiting personal injury lawsuits..." If you feel you have been hoodwinked by your President, the insurance companies, big business and many of your own legislators, you should. In a masterful propaganda campaign, they have pulled the old "bait and switch" scam. As a result, they have persuaded many of Ohio's citizens to vote away one of the most sacred of rights - the right to have a jury decide what is fair compensation for someone injured by a defective product, an incompetent physician, or a negligent driver.
You see, folks, the Ohio legislature is telling you that you are intelligent enough to decide whether a criminal should be put to death, but you are not smart enough to decide what is fair compensation for the widow with three children whose husband was killed by a drunk driver. Nope - you just cannot be trusted. And if they keep repeating the same rhetoric over and over and over again - "greedy trial lawyers", "frivolous lawsuits", "doctors leaving the state", they will convince you of that. Doesn't the emperor look nice in his new clothes?
TIMOTHY B. SAYLOR
Examining the Work of State Courts, 2003, at 23, National Center for State Courts 2004.
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