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Ambulance Chasers

6 September 2006

I’ve long been a proponent of tort reform. The need is obvious. Trial lawyers are bankrupting this country and it’s time to put a stop to it.

On his blog, Uncommon Sense, Chuck Muth writes about a hospital in Putnam County West Virginia that is on the verge of going belly up from lawsuits.

We often read about the depradations caused when hordes of legal locusts descend upon an unfortunate business or industry. Rarely is the harm so obvious as in West Virginia’s Putnam County, where a flood of lawsuits threatens to put the major local hospital, the private Putnam General Hospital, out of business.

This hospital is dealing with more than 100 lawsuits and it cannot survive. In fact, it stopped accepting patients and was about to close when it was bought out. But the new owners are failing as well.

Explains Martha Montelongo in Human Events: “Putnam General is collapsing beneath the weight of more than a hundred predatory lawsuits filed by local lawyers — lawsuits as unlikely to mete out justice as they are certain to shut down the hospital. Besides the trial attorneys, the only other beneficiary of this tragedy are local advertisers, whose revenues spiked due to more than 20 ads from lawyers trolling for clients.”

Hospitals all over this country are going through similar experiences. And who benefits? Certainly not the patients. When a lawsuit is won or settled, the lawyers get the lion’s share of the money!

While caps on punitive damages might help, there is a better solution.

The United States is the only western country that does not have a loser pays civil justice system. And interestingly enough, we seem to be the only western country collapsing under the weight of predatory litigation.

In many cases doctors, hospitals and companies end up settling out of court simply because it is cheaper than litigating and winning! This has to stop. If the loser had to pay all the legal costs of the winner there would be far fewer frivolous lawsuits brought in the first place. Hospitals and doctors could defend themselves knowing that if they are right, they will not only prevail in court, they will not go bankrupt doing it.

Many have argued that such a change would deny justice to those with low incomes. That, however, doesn’t seem to be the case in other western countries. And when trial lawyers take cases on contingency, the poor don’t come out of pocket anyway. With such a system trial lawyers would stop pursuing dubious cases because it could cost them!

It is time for reform. The time is now.