dayman

The same system. There are a variety of legal remedies you may be able to seek depending on the state you live in and the facts of the either particular case. And if the case was thrown out the other side lost money it was not in their best interest to simply throw spaghetti at the wall. If the facts don't give rise to any COA that can provide any relief and the news paper coverage hurt you, then that's life. It's not a perfect world I'm not saying it is. But the threat of litigation is a necessary evil in our society...and the press is the press.

LOL Doc. Funny. At it's core my overall opinion boils down to this: We can and should continue to talk about every idea there is, and look for ways to tweek the system and improve it carefully. It's never going to be perfect and just like other areas of the law it may well always seem like there are more cases than we would like and there will always be some bad outcomes in favor of both sides. But the traditional negligence formula is not so broken as some interests will have you think. Not every plaintiff wins. Most awards are within the realm of justice. Cases get thrown out. And yes...insurance costs money. Arbitrarily capping damages, overly restricting our access to the courts, vilifying tort plaintiffs and throwing our basic negligence law to the wolves isn't the way to go IMO. Tread carefully, err on the side of caution, don't believe every talking point you hear and protect your own rights...if you aren't willing to do so I promise you the Chamber of Commerce isn't going to do it for you. Keeping costs down is a noble effort but not at the expense of your rights...certainly not when it doesn't appear to pass itself on the customer anyway in many places where unjust caps have been implemented. Reasonable and careful reform that puts individual rights first is the only way to go here.

I don't think you can set a standard of care by statute...medicine is highly fact specific and the body of knowledge changes more quickly than the state congress can keep up with anyway...if less screening is the norm let that go to the negligence claim itself...as for arbitration boards I'm not opposed to voluntary arbitration but arbitration has it's own whole can of worms...

Agreed that parameters are not the same as a cap. Some level of parameter setting could be tolerable...particularly if they're more akin to guidelines accompanied by a nonexclusive set of factors ... certificates of merit are also not necessarily the devil MAYBE some sort of panel (on the flip side of reform to appease those who feel the system is harassing people)... there are obviously some things that can be done and some things that have been done in certain places that can make the system work a little smoother...I would still oppose hard parameters set by congress and dance with precedent any day of the week over the corporate shank job that shapes the caps and would shape any parameters to come from your average state congress (particularly in those real conservative states)...and that's really what it comes down to with me...it's almost always going to be closer to justice there than it is in Congress at the very least you and your story are there and they look you in the eye (and the other point of view just say that makes me pro-plaintiff then so be it). If some bought judge ****s you...he does it to your face. If a jury doesn't think you deserve it...they heard your case. That's the way it should be, that's the system I prefer. The punitive damages factor...meh...it's ok but the unpredictability of that hammer coming down (particularly with the larger corporations more prone to do the heartless calculations) is really what I see as the true deterrent...that fear of God so to speak...I'm not so concerned with punitive damages to tell you the truth though those are just a windfall in the end I get more riled up about the plaintiff's rightful award than I do about punitive damages. EDIT: And btw things like corporate shank job and "bought judges"...while I do know it's fact in certain times and in certain places I do know how it makes me sound and I'll just add this edit to say that yes in general it is a bit overboard to put it like that generally but just consider "overt politics" to be the lesser included there...this is a message board after all.

I can only imagine if they asked us in Florida if we wanted to stop paying property tax. Coupled with no income tax...it would be nice...and I'm sure our amazing schools would get better haha...probably get a few more professional golfers which would make all of them... I know nothing of ND but...this is surprising...maybe it shouldn't be

Except for the ones that don't want certain laws to pass....

They said no http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/13/pf/north-dakota-property-tax/

FYI for anyone that watched that video I posted where the guy in Texas shot is neighbor...he just went down for murder today. Only 5 hours of deliberation. http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/apArticle/id/D9VCORV80/

LOL at the wording of the first sentence. Look at the stats in Texas since 2003. Doesn't seem to be true. As for the second sentence. I would argue you should move it China. (no offense of course)

Gina Chon, who had covered Iraq for the Journal, quit under pressure after the disclosure of her relationship with Brett McGurk while both lived in Baghdad in 2008. ....yup but that's not saying much...

LOL unless I would be claiming a loss of enjoyment of life? Of course I would be claiming loss of enjoyment in life. If I can't work anymore, we can have the battle of economists and figure out my earnings lost and all that...afterwords of course I'M !@#$ING BLIND. lol Can the jury tell how much money it would take to approximate making me whole as a result of that? Of course not, nobody can. I can never actually be made whole by money, it is a fiction. But that is no reason to deny me damages in an attempt to fairly compensate me for that. If the judge wants to reduce it afterwords b/c the jury was excessive FINE!!! So be it!!! But not the damn state congress with some cap of $250K that bears absolutely no relationship to me or my situation...that's completely unfair and honestly it's not justice it's just corrupt protectionism at the expense of my rights (in this hypothetical situation of course...I did not lose my eyes in Texas )

Why would you cap noneconomic damages before punitive damages? Some of the worst things that can possibly happen to you are noneconomic in nature. $250K would make me whole if some gross negligence on the part of a manufacturer causes me to lose my eye sight for the rest of my life? That's justice b/c we need to "stop excessive jury awards" from hurting the manufacturing industry? Maybe Texas justice...but not my idea of justice.

LOL are you saying he thought I was talking about SCOTUS? If that's the case...then LOL I mean there isn't much I can say about that we're talking tort reform here...lol...and "I've lost credibility"...

LOL well that's not my fault 3rd. Look it up. Why the hell would I say we elect justices in many states if we don't? It varies from State to State obviously there are a number of different processes. In Texas, needless to say, they elect them. And Karl Rove did a lot of work w/ that. If you don't even know this...then you probably have some reading up to do about the civil justice system generally and tort reform as a whole. Maybe even just what it is... And to his credit Rove is good at what he does he and the Chamber of Commerce and other business interests he flipped that court hard since the late '80s.

LOL don't be mad that you apparently don't realize that...yes 3rdling we do in many states. Take care of your precious credibility.

And the hot coffee case itself was one of the prime examples of tort reform lobbying at it's best. Old lady orders coffee..pulls into a parked spot to put in sugar, spills it on herself (she was held 20% liable for that)...the coffee is unGodly hot it causes 3rd degree burns within seconds all over her legs and crotch and the back of her legs...over $10K in damage to repair it. They write a letter asking McDonald's to cover teh costs...nope...they offered $800. So she sues. Turns out the policy of all McDonalds was to have all coffee that hot "to hot to drink" according to their manuals" b/c that's the way people like it...to hot to drink right away. They had badly burned many people before her...done nothing to change. She sues and wins 5ish Million and it's later reduced to 400kis along with a gag order so she can't talk. Then magically she's the new story everywhere! (by magically I mean...Chamber of Commerce magically) ...she's the new evil face of tort reform! The punitive damages in the first place were 2 days worth of coffee sales...and she didn't get that anyway... This is what she got: https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTvImvUQoqGWyNskdwuvROw71HetcGWK1q_6090CkprmYRYK7qp https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTCFVWg_Sdev0cyTMawTlsmSfSNpX4GK3a-Lgtun_ND9M-dxcCYBw https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR-MsJYKEC-cY2ojdu3dvd0Q9pKcznhjRz-Q_MdxCu2Y7zLTtxG ....but this story...this became the story of tort reform. The story of all things evil about the civil justice system. A story so bad we need to give up our rights to court and cap damages!

The hard truth is it's Karl Rove finding the perfect wedge issue that further marries the Chamber of Commerce to Republican candidates and can be spun to sell to the people as if giving up their rights is in the public interest. He's been buying elections for supreme court justices since the '80s, the Chamber has been misrepresenting the facts of individual cases to turn the American people against their own civil justice system (as well as slandering supreme court justices), and so on... And by the way...if you cannot basically prove that there is unbelievable benefit for tort reform that is measurable then you've lost b/c the costs are very real...people rant and rave about our general "freedom" and our "rights" on a number of issues...our access to courts and interest in jury trials are one such case where the issue is real....and to people who get jury verdicts reduced by these arbitrary caps set by state congressional officials who have no idea about their case it's even more real. http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Reimbursements-per-enrollee-500x383.jpg http://www.citizen.org/documents/Texas_Liability_Limits.pdf Supporters of limiting health providers’ liability have touted Texas’ medical malpractice experiment as the solution for improving national health care. For example, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann held up Texas as a successful liability “pilot program” in an address in September, stating, “The state of Texas did a wonderful job of lawsuit reform and actually saw medical costs come down. We know it works.”1 Others have echoed Bachmann’s claim. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and 11 other members of the House of Representatives cited Texas in a recent report that claimed positive effects of limiting liability.2 Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) struck a similar theme in the “findings” of a proposed amendment to Senate health insurance legislation that he filed this month.3 But most of the claims touting positive effects of the Texas law – which took effect in September 2003 and included a $250,000 per defendant liability cap – are flatly contradicted by the data. By the measures commonly used to evaluate health care – such as cost, the uninsured rate, and access to care – Texas has regressed since its liability law took effect. Collectively, these measures show that Texas has one of the worst health care systems in the United States. Moreover, since 2003 Texas has either failed to improve or grown even worse compared to other states on almost every measure. Since the liability laws took effect: • The cost of health care in Texas (measured by per patient Medicare reimbursements) has increased at nearly double the national average; • spending increases for diagnostic testing (measured by per patient Medicare reimbursements) have far exceeded the national average; • the state’s uninsured rate has increased, remaining the highest in the country; • the cost of health insurance in the state has more than doubled; • growth in the number of doctors per capita has slowed; and • the number of doctors per capita in underserved rural areas has declined. Malpractice insurance costs in Texas have gone down. Medical costs have not. Health insurance costs have not. More people are not insured. on and on...but this is a success....we should ALL be like Texas. In 2010, the average premium for family coverage in Texas was $14,526. That’s $655 higher than the U.S. average. Those numbers seem to indicate that doctors have not passed on their own insurance savings to their patients and that they are not practicing medicine any less defensively than before tort reform was enacted. http://wendellpotter.com/2011/09/the-mythical-benefits-of-tort-reform-in-texas/

I don't have the answer but I've posted in this topic some ideas I would support over a wall Don't let them get ya down man, not everyone is for the wall here lol

The simplification of set of facts, and the subsequent vilification of an award (many of which are reduced) gets quite a bit of press. And it's not by accident btw, that people know of these stories. God forbid the truth of some of the most famous cases be known (when a gag order expires or can somehow be avoided), or the human costs of caps have light shed on them (both noneconomic and for God's sake the poor people in states with caps on all damages). You need to understand the powerful lobbying effort that works towards aggressive tort reform.

On this issue I'm fairly passionate so sure. MDP me on tort reform. Hell I would just encourage you to do your own research and come to your own conclusions and I'm sure you wouldn't have it any other way. There is a fairly well received documentary that I can link you to if you would like to spend 90 minutes and hear one side of the argument through that and then do whatever additional research on your own you want to affirm or refine your own opinion. I would have to PM it to you though so you can PM if you want the link....it's not some come-to-jesus fight propaganda w/ propaganda video but it is admittedly anti-tort reform...in either event for 99% of people it's worth watching. You or anybody else that wants it can PM I'll paste the link and you catch it, bash it, find some parts reasonable others unreasonable...ignore it...it's just a movie...you can do whatever you want with it.

I'm sorry you are in such a hurry to marginalize the civil justice system in the name of lobbying forces who have misled you 3rdling.

Well agree to disagree. The facts are grossly distorted. Obviously the simple phrase "tort reform" is meaningless and there may in fact be laws in some states that could use a second look...but the "tort reform movement" as it is...is nothing short of evil....use enough money and misinformation to take people's rights away and they'll thank you for it.

Tort reform. The ACA. Let's all just believe the machine on every issue.

LOL the legal system isn't perfect so let's start capping everything by statute. A bad verdict? Some bad lawsuits the judge didn't have the wisdom the throw out? Let's just be unfair to everybody and solve the problem. And lets distort the facts on the overall cost argument to make it seem like people should support this.

Ugh Doc...get your tort reform out of here. If someone doesn't wake up one day b/c you are negligent for God's sake don't look to some statute to put low price on their life.