ABLEnews Extra

                    Half-Baked Hokum

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Heard yet of the Little League Baseball Defense Act? How about the
Girl Scout Protection bill? The House passed both of them--under
different names, for sure, but as part of the corporate-inspired drive
to enact federal legislation to make the civil justice system safer
for the makers and sellers of dangerous products, incompetent doctors,
and those members of the business and political community who equate
tort reform with villainizing trial lawyers.

In the House debate to reduce the number of lawsuits, no deceits or
shards of disinformation about the trial bar were held to be too wild.
In media buys and speeches on the House floor, the Girl Scouts were
depicted as helpless victims of frivolous lawsuit abuse. To pay the
costs of liability premiums mountains of Thin Mints and Samoas--87,000
boxes popped up as the favored number--must be sold.

Over on the base paths, it was claimed that the Little Leaguers could
be permanently benched if money-mongering trial lawyers are not
thwarted. In print and broadcast ads--paid for by the Chamber of
Commerce and insurance interests, among others--child actors dressed
as Little Leaguers were used to beg Congress for protection lest the
"season end in a lawsuit."

Absent hard information, soft nonsense prevailed. The Girl Scout
cookie ads were half-baked, which matched the half-cocked statement of
Rep. John Christensen, a first-term Omaha Republican and a 1989
graduate of the South Texas College of Law: The Girl Scouts have "been
beset by predatory lawyers looking for anyone with pockets to pick."

Earning a merit badge for chasing lies, a Scout official told the Wall
Street Journal: "It is not true at all that we have been barraged by
frivilous lawsuits. That is absolutely not the case." The national
organization, which takes no position on the tort issue, told the
Chamber of Commerce and fellow connivers to lay off the adds.

Evidence is thin that children are being denied Little League baseball
because trial lawyers are ruining the fun. A Lexis/Nexis database
search by a consumer group found only two tort suits that led to
compensation for injuries: $10,000 and $25,000, both settled out of
court. One of the most publicized instances in the past 20
years--parents successfully forcing the Little League to allow girls
to play--was not a tort case.

Another ad campaign based on deceit involves the McDonald
Corporation's hot coffee case. As a result of constant repetition and
ridicule, the $2.9 million award to a severely burned wpman is now
embedded in the public consciousness, evoking sympathy for the
seemingly beleagured McDonald's. The ignored facts include a
court-ordered 75% reduction of the award, that the woman's burns were
real and stood up in court, and that McDonald's had received at least
700 complaints about the excessively high temperature of the coffee,
and had paid at least $600,000 to settle similar claims. So burned,
McDonald's now cools its coffee by 20 degrees.

With a few more House members citing the false $2.9 million award, the
McDonald's coffee lady could ascend to the mythological heights of
Ronald Reagan's Cadillac-owning welfare queen.

That the House debate was driven by hokum underscores the shallowness
of the attacks against trial lawyers. If a litigation explosion
exists--tort claims are only 5% of all civil claims--the scourge isn't
lawyers working for the injured victims of corporate or medical
menaces. It's lawyers of corporations suing each other.

In December 1993, the Wall Street Journal, reporting on the first ever
study of lawsuit patterns of Fortune 1000 companies, stated that the
real legal battlegrounds are in boardrooms: "Businesses' contract
disputes with each other constitute the largest single category of
lawsuits filed in federal court." No comprehensive numbers exist for
state courts.

The specter of "predatory" injury lawyers careering through the
marketplace shouting "Sue, sue," is more fakery. The Journal reported:
"Product liability suits against Fortune 1000 companies have actually
dropped from a high of 3,500 in 1985 to 1,500 in 1991."

If the emotion-driven and fantasy-based campaign against trial lawyers
were a car, an immediate recall would be ordered--to halt the reckless
endangerment of the public.

[House Zealots Serve Half-Baked Evidence, Washington Post, March 21, 1995]
   
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