Tort Reform - What Is It?
Tort Reform I
Before we can understand tort reform, we must first understand what tort law is. Tort law seeks out those responsible for harm to others, usually on the basis of fault. Tort law, or personal injury law, requires those who are responsible to compensate, usually with money. Medical bills, lost time from work, diminished ability to perform every day chores, and the incapacity to enjoy recreational or daily life all are considered for compensation. It is especially difficult to put a price tag on a wrongful death case, as no amount of money can ever make the family completely whole again.
Typically American courts expect a jury to ascertain the damages in a tort case. Juries are comprised of ordinary citizens who are expected to fairly determine fault, and to place a monetary value on the compensation to the tort victim. Juries can arrive at different verdicts when hearing a similar case under the same circumstances. Just as we all do, jurors often bring their own biases that may hurt or help your case. This unpredictability can bring a wide range of results to your tort case.
One of the main determinations a good plaintiff’s attorney will make is choosing a good venue. Some plaintiff friendly venues include West Virginia, Cook County, Illinois, South Florida, and Atlantic County, New Jersey. Sometimes juries award high monetary awards in punitive damages. Punitive damages are different than compensatory damages. Punitive damages are designed, as the name implies, to punish the offender. Remember the famous “pants case’ where an administrative law judge sued his dry cleaners for $54 million for misplacing his pants? He cited the District of Columbia’s consumer protection law to justify his outrageous demand. This case went on for two years and took a two-day trial before it was rightly dismissed. Ah, the Tort system at work.
Back to punitive. Punitive means to punish. The purpose of punitive damages is two fold: to deter wrongful conduct by others (usually manufacturers) and to serve as a normative function of expressing shock or outrage at the defendant’s actions. Punitive damages are to punish an offender for intentional or malicious conduct and to deter similar future conduct. While punitive damage awards are infrequent, their frequency and size have grown in recent years, hence the tort reform political debate. They are routinely asked for in civil lawsuits presently. The difficulty of predicting whether punitive damages will be awarded by a jury at trial, and the current trend toward large amounts when they are awarded, have also contributed to inconsistent outcomes in similar cases.
To defend tort litigation, the costs can get expensive quickly. Organizations advocating tort reform, such as American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), claim that such costs cause all of us to pay more in indirect costs, such as higher health insurance premiums, and a higher price of goods. Tort reform has been hotly debated in Congress, the national media, and in academia, with advocates claiming we are in a tort crisis disagreeing with those who think tort crisis is a myth. According to Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, 2003, the expenditures on the tort system are substantial, about $250 billion a year, and some estimates suggest that indirect costs through “defensive medicine” and other responses to the threat of lawsuits are even more costly.
So, what is tort reform? It’s a group of ideas and proposed and some enacted (Caps on awards for instance) laws designed to changed the way our civil law works. Tort reform laws are designed to limit the circumstances in which the injured party may sue, and how much money to award to cases. If you think that tort reform will help, just look at New Zealand. In 1972 New Zealand introduced the first universal no-fault scheme for all accident victims. This is based on the principle that anyone suffering personal injury, regardless of whether they can point to a negligent party who caused their loss, may receive state benefits from the government run Accident Compensation Corporation. The goal is to achieve full equality in compensation, while reducing costs by removing the process from courts where litigation is hugely expensive. In the 1970s Australia and the United Kingdom drew up similar proposals for similar no-fault schemes. But the efforts and recommendations amounted to little, and with changes of government the reform agenda were abandoned.
Next Tort reform article: The specific ways of applying tort limitations. Stay tuned.
To learn more about personal injury law issues, please click personal injury . To learn about our personal injury lawyer in Maryland, please click personal injury lawyer.
Before we can understand tort reform, we must first understand what tort law is. Tort law seeks out those responsible for harm to others, usually on the basis of fault. Tort law, or personal injury law, requires those who are responsible to compensate, usually with money. Medical bills, lost time from work, diminished ability to perform every day chores, and the incapacity to enjoy recreational or daily life all are considered for compensation. It is especially difficult to put a price tag on a wrongful death case, as no amount of money can ever make the family completely whole again.
Typically American courts expect a jury to ascertain the damages in a tort case. Juries are comprised of ordinary citizens who are expected to fairly determine fault, and to place a monetary value on the compensation to the tort victim. Juries can arrive at different verdicts when hearing a similar case under the same circumstances. Just as we all do, jurors often bring their own biases that may hurt or help your case. This unpredictability can bring a wide range of results to your tort case.
One of the main determinations a good plaintiff’s attorney will make is choosing a good venue. Some plaintiff friendly venues include West Virginia, Cook County, Illinois, South Florida, and Atlantic County, New Jersey. Sometimes juries award high monetary awards in punitive damages. Punitive damages are different than compensatory damages. Punitive damages are designed, as the name implies, to punish the offender. Remember the famous “pants case’ where an administrative law judge sued his dry cleaners for $54 million for misplacing his pants? He cited the District of Columbia’s consumer protection law to justify his outrageous demand. This case went on for two years and took a two-day trial before it was rightly dismissed. Ah, the Tort system at work.
Back to punitive. Punitive means to punish. The purpose of punitive damages is two fold: to deter wrongful conduct by others (usually manufacturers) and to serve as a normative function of expressing shock or outrage at the defendant’s actions. Punitive damages are to punish an offender for intentional or malicious conduct and to deter similar future conduct. While punitive damage awards are infrequent, their frequency and size have grown in recent years, hence the tort reform political debate. They are routinely asked for in civil lawsuits presently. The difficulty of predicting whether punitive damages will be awarded by a jury at trial, and the current trend toward large amounts when they are awarded, have also contributed to inconsistent outcomes in similar cases.
To defend tort litigation, the costs can get expensive quickly. Organizations advocating tort reform, such as American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), claim that such costs cause all of us to pay more in indirect costs, such as higher health insurance premiums, and a higher price of goods. Tort reform has been hotly debated in Congress, the national media, and in academia, with advocates claiming we are in a tort crisis disagreeing with those who think tort crisis is a myth. According to Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, 2003, the expenditures on the tort system are substantial, about $250 billion a year, and some estimates suggest that indirect costs through “defensive medicine” and other responses to the threat of lawsuits are even more costly.
So, what is tort reform? It’s a group of ideas and proposed and some enacted (Caps on awards for instance) laws designed to changed the way our civil law works. Tort reform laws are designed to limit the circumstances in which the injured party may sue, and how much money to award to cases. If you think that tort reform will help, just look at New Zealand. In 1972 New Zealand introduced the first universal no-fault scheme for all accident victims. This is based on the principle that anyone suffering personal injury, regardless of whether they can point to a negligent party who caused their loss, may receive state benefits from the government run Accident Compensation Corporation. The goal is to achieve full equality in compensation, while reducing costs by removing the process from courts where litigation is hugely expensive. In the 1970s Australia and the United Kingdom drew up similar proposals for similar no-fault schemes. But the efforts and recommendations amounted to little, and with changes of government the reform agenda were abandoned.
Next Tort reform article: The specific ways of applying tort limitations. Stay tuned.
To learn more about personal injury law issues, please click personal injury . To learn about our personal injury lawyer in Maryland, please click personal injury lawyer.
