Our System Under Attack!!!
Although the politics of this election year and the tragedies arising from war abroad dominate our nightly news, there is an ominous movement afoot which gets few headlines but which seeks to gut the fundamental rights we as American citizens have to seek justice from our court system. If I sound like an alarmist, it is for good reason: those who seek to impose what they like to call "tort reform" are pushing legislation that would simply close the courthouse doors to Americans, and particularly Oregonians, who are injured through the negligent acts of physicians and other medical providers.
I spent twenty years defending the interests of physicians sued in medical malpractice cases. In so doing, I developed a deep respect for the skill and compassion of physicians practicing good medicine and genuinely caring for the welfare of their patients. I also saw cases of poor, cavalier or non-existent medical care which seriously injured good people and their families. Simply put, the current political movement referred to as "tort reform" sacrifices the rights of those injured by bad medical care in favor of protecting the financial resources of insurance companies and groups of medical providers. Ironically, the legislation and ballot measures being proposed do nothing to improve medical care; they only lessen the consequences for those who commit the medical mistakes which cause injuries.
The self-interest of the groups pushing this legislation is best demonstrated by a simple example. Historically, the vast majority of medical malpractice cases which go to trial in Oregon (that is, are decided by Oregonians acting as jurors) result in verdicts in favor of the physician or hospital defendants. Clearly, many cases do not reach the courtroom because they are settled by the doctor's malpractice insurance company or are otherwise resolved. But for those cases that are not otherwise resolved, the jury is the ultimate decision-maker. The current tort reform movement seeks to arbitrarily cap damage awards and thereby override what juries decide is fair and reasonable. Yet malpractice insurance companies--and the lawyers they hire--never prefer to try cases to a judge or arbitrator. Why? Because the statistics show that the heavy majority of jury verdicts in malpractice cases favor doctors and hospitals. The carriers would be foolish to ignore these statistics. So ask yourself: Why does the American Medical Association and the Oregon Medical Association want to restrict what damages juries can award? The answer is simple: to limit the financial consequences of those found by jurors to be responsible for causing injuries to patients. Put more bluntly, they want the benefits of our jury system but they want it limited when it doesn't go their way. This view is repugnant to the concept of fairness that underlies our jury system.
The other fact which exposes the self-interest of the tort reformers is this: by seeking to impose restrictions on what juries can do, they are saying that we, as citizens, need to be "protected" from what we, as citizen jurors, decide is right. They talk of "outrageous awards" and "runaway verdicts," yet they neglect to mention that the people sitting on juries are the same people who walk into voting booths and cast their votes every election. Indeed, casting a vote on a jury is as fundamental an American right and privilege as casting a vote for a candidate or a ballot measure. Efforts to limit the effect of jury verdicts is as fundamentally wrong as limiting our "one person/one vote" tradition.
I will periodically post links on this site which will allow you to read articles or editorials on the subject of so-called tort reform. Just remember: the jury system is the ultimate equalizer. Without a jury to protect our rights, we are at the whim of those seeking to protect those which cause unnecessary injuries. Let's not let them take away the rights we have had for a long, long time. Dave Miller
TORT REFORM IN THE NEWS:
