Senate OKs Tort Reform

[TastesLikeChicken]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6947569/

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Thursday gave President Bush the first legislative victory of his second term by approving legislation to help shield businesses from major class action lawsuits.

Under the legislation, long sought by big business, large multistate class action lawsuits like the ones that have been brought against tobacco companies could no longer be heard in small state courts. Such courts have handed out multimillion-dollar verdicts.

Instead, the cases would be heard by federal judges, who have not proven as open to those type of lawsuits.

The Senate passed the bill 72-26. The House is expected to take it up next week and send it to President Bush for his signature.

Bush and other bill supporters ? who have pushed for the legislation for almost six years ? say it is needed because greedy lawyers have taken advantage of the state system by filing frivolous lawsuits in state courts where they know they can get big verdicts.

Senators who back the bill say lawyers make more money from such cases than do the actual victims, and that lawyers sometimes threaten companies with class action lawsuits just to get quick financial settlements. Regular people, they assure, will not lose their day in court.

The bill ?is designed to rein in the lawsuit abuses, and it does just that,? Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. said. ?A plaintiff may end up in federal court, yes, rather instead of state court, but no citizen will lose his or her right to bring a case.?

 

[Engineer]

:thumbsup:

While I understand the right to file lawsuits, especially if a "REAL" safety issue is involved, I also understand that maw and paw small town jury just love socking it to the big business because "they can afford it" regardless of whether real harm takes place or not. Hopefully, it won't be abused to the opposite extreme in that safety is actually compromised.

 

[irwincur]

It will help. Things were really getting out of control.

Like companies with like names being sued for asbestos claims, even though they never existed back when it was a real issue. There was a case where one company with a similar name of a major asbestos manufacturer was sued over 50 times. What could they do? Nothing. Every case costs a lot of money whether or not it makes it to court. No one lawyer bothered to see if they were actually suing the right people.

It has become a lawyer get rich quick turkey shoot. Sue a company, for anything, they are liable to pay you something.

 

[Rainsford]

If I understand things correctly, this tort reform consists of making it more difficult to sue a big company in a class action suit and win. Now obviously this is intended to get rid of silly suits, but doesn't it hurt people with legitimate claims as well? It raises the difficulty bar for ALL suits, it makes no judgement as far as I can see between good and bad suits.

Clearly the idea is that federal courts will be fair to people with real reasons to be suing and throw out stupid suits the state courts wouldn't...but I hesisitate to be happy about anything that touches the protection we have from big companies. Maybe it's because I view it as the people need protecting from big companies, not the other way around. But I could be wrong, maybe this won't have any affect on real suits. Somehow I don't think it's that simple...any thoughts from anybody else?

 

[dmcowen674]

This will close down Jackson Mississippi.

Lawyers came from all over the Country to move there to cash on on the Lawsuit Mania there.

 

[cwjerome]

The trial lawyers are F-ing things up pretty good and I'm glad to see this reform going through. It actually helps the little guys more than big business, which can eat the expenses as part of the "cost of business," unlike the up-and-comers.

 

[Infohawk]

Did you guys even read the article? This is about class-actions that hurt large corporations. Nothing about ma and pa here.

And of course this means more cases in federal court as opposed to state courts. Most of the shmucks asking for this stuff are supposedly into states' rights.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: Infohawk
Did you guys even read the article? This is about class-actions that hurt large corporations. Nothing about ma and pa here.

And of course this means more cases in federal court as opposed to state courts. Most of the shmucks asking for this stuff are supposedly into states' rights.

What another poster was saying is that this takes the decisions for class action lawsuits out of the hands of ma & pa juries and elevates it a bit.

The juries on these kinds of cases will now be more of the blue variety rather than red, if the case passes the tougher muster of the federal court judges in the first place.

Is this somehow a bad thing?

 

[MisterCornell]

Trial law is a big business in the redneck courts of the Deep South, the same courts that railroaded so many black men to their deaths just a few years ago. Now their scam is to make millions, or billions, suing companies. And its the American consumer that pays with higher costs for commodities. Companies that never made asbestos are paying millions because they acquired other companies that used to make asbestos decades ago. Cigarrette companies get sued for billions of dollars of lawfully earned profits. It's ridiculous. America does not exist to make trial lawyers rich at the expense of those who actually work. This is a welcome move.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

/checks to see if there's a full moon tonight

 

[Darkhawk28]

Tort reform is neccessary but not limiting awards.

 

[aidanjm]

"Yes, please, I WANT big business to walk all over me. Thank you!"

 

[ciba]

My understanding is that cases are not automatically moved to federal court and there needs to be a standard to move it. If all the plaintiffs are in one state, the state court will still hear it. This simply prevents shopping jurisdictions by picking the one plaintiff out of thousands who lives in the county you like.

 

[cquark]

Is this a smackdown on greedy lawyers or a victory for big biz?

It's clearly both.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: Infohawk
Did you guys even read the article? This is about class-actions that hurt large corporations. Nothing about ma and pa here.

And of course this means more cases in federal court as opposed to state courts. Most of the shmucks asking for this stuff are supposedly into states' rights.

Which gives Bush more control via appointing Federal judges.

 

[irwincur]

Which gives Bush more control via appointing Federal judges

If the Dems will ever let him.

 

[SuperTool]

It's an assault on states rights.

 

[Genx87]

They shouldnt cap lawsuits as much as shield them from repeat offenders. It costs about 50 bucks to file a lawsuit against somebody. At some point when it becomes clear harassment the person doing the harassment should be thrown in jail and have to pay for the legal expenses.

I fear if they cap the damages awarded it will take away a tool of the avg person to levy a judgement against a corporate entity who was negligent.

 

[ReiAyanami]

so when can we expect our health costs to go down? will it be going down 10% every year from now on instead of going up 10%?

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: ReiAyanami
so when can we expect our health costs to go down? will it be going down 10% every year from now on instead of going up 10%?

Nope, it's gone up about 14-15% in the last year and predicted to go up about 7-8% this year.

 

[alent1234]

Originally posted by: SuperTool
It's an assault on states rights.

how is it an assault on state's rights? class actions are made up of thousands of plaintiffs across the US most of whom don't even know they are part of the class. They should have always been tried in federal courts rather than state courts.

 

[slash196]

You know, it seems a little unfair to blame lawyers for the prevalence of junk lawsuits...it's like blaming spoons for the obesity epidemic.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: slash196
You know, it seems a little unfair to blame lawyers for the prevalence of junk lawsuits...it's like blaming spoons for the obesity epidemic.

"There is no spoon."

It's a shame we can't say the same thing about lawyers.

 

[Zebo]

Don't know. They are all lawyers so probably know what's best for them. I always liked loser pays.. this would eliminate the smaller frivolous suits which are most common and most damaging to small biz as well as big biz or just about anyone else.

 

[alent1234]

Originally posted by: slash196
You know, it seems a little unfair to blame lawyers for the prevalence of junk lawsuits...it's like blaming spoons for the obesity epidemic.

take a trip to NYC and go into the subway and watch some local TV. tons of ads by lawyers trolling for clients to sue someone