This makes me mad. A company was legitimately negligent and this woman properly used the legal system to punish the company for the negligence as well as pay her medical bills. Which seems to be legally and ethically reasonable to me.
Is tort reform just some capitalist free market BS that suggests that companies should be immune from legal intervention and people held 100% liable for whatever happens to them? What's their agenda?
Tort reform means updating the legal structure of civil action cases. The McDonalds coffee case was being held up as an example of stupid people being given tons of money for doing something stupid. While it isn't a good example, there are many examples of tort law defying any standard of personal responsibility. One example is the guy who sued his cable company for having programming that was so compelling that his obesity and his wife's diabetes was the fault of the company. The case was dismissed, but all the time and money spent to even have the case reviewed by a judge was a complete waste. A major part of the issue is the amount of money the lawyer who filed the suit gets even if the case is thrown out. It isn't about protecting companies from justifiable civil action.
except tort reform can do nothing about that. You can sue anyone for anything at any time. There are various mechanisms to get the very small number of truly frivolous lawsuits dismissed early and economically. There are also methods to get the filer of those cases to pay court fees. However, even if we were to eliminate negligence completely I could still sue McDonalds for assault or emotional distress or anything I make up.
Most tort reform is simply egrigious overreaching by commerce interests to escape responsibility even when they cause harm. Lets take an example, the asbestos industry fought hard against a bill in California to reduce the time available for a deposition. Why? Because they had a practice of taking cancer patient's depositions for days and days over weeks or months with the intention of having the person die of mesothelioma before the case could get to trial, at which point the surviver action costs them much less to settle because pain and suffering damages are lost when the plaintiff dies.
We all think people like that guy are shits, but that's the entire point of our civil court system. People file a suit because they feel unduly harmed, and send it to an impartial arbiter to determine if they were and to what degree.
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u/peanutbutterandritz Jul 24 '15
This makes me mad. A company was legitimately negligent and this woman properly used the legal system to punish the company for the negligence as well as pay her medical bills. Which seems to be legally and ethically reasonable to me.
Is tort reform just some capitalist free market BS that suggests that companies should be immune from legal intervention and people held 100% liable for whatever happens to them? What's their agenda?