jvh-style rantification

Gentlemen, how are you? It's been a little while since I've heard from any of you. In my neck of the woods, the new job is humming along, I'm planning a trip to LA to visit the new bambino next weekend, and I'm glad that there are at least two of us in this incredibly important swing state who are voting the right way. (grin)

I know that I've been doing a lot of political posting recently, but I'm resigned to it--it's that season, folks!

I wrote an email about tort reform to one of my more conservative (but pragmatic, thank heavens) friends. I thought you all might like the article I reference. The note I wrote may or may not be interesting. I can't tell, because unlike most people, I'm my own best critic, at least today. I think it's a work of pure unadulterated genius. (kidding)

Here goes:

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This is the kind of stuff that makes me crazy. I'm not suggesting that tort reform isn't necessary in some form. If there is an *actual* direct connection between high insurance premiums (and high costs associated with receiving services from people who have high insurance premiums, like doctors) and outrageous lawsuits, I'm all for it.

On the other hand, as Mencimer points out, the whole point of punitive damage is that it's actually *punitive*. You can argue that the Exxon decision for 4.5B was over the top, but frankly, with the kind of money Exxon deals with *daily,* anything less would have simply amounted to a slap on the wrist. And a $100K limit (resulting in a $100K punitive decision against one of the richest companies in the world) is kind of like asking me to pay a nickel for a speeding ticket.

Also, though this is more of a vague feeling I've got, I'm a little irked by the suggestion that a jury of my peers isn't smart enough to know better. The distrust of juries implied by the tort reform movement strikes me as ironically opposed to the most basic ideals of the conservative movement. Because frankly, it's not the scurrilous lawsuits that are the problem. It's the juries who hear those suits and then (apparently not as often, or as drastically, as we all think) pronounce judgment. It's local control at its best! And I also get a little riled up by the argument that it's those slimy nasty trial lawyers who are the problem. I have a feeling that about half of the slimy nasty lawyers in the world are trial lawyers, and the other half represent insurance companies. That's the equalizing nature of our legal system. (And hopefully, there are some not-so-slimy lawyers on both sides of that equation, too!)

All of that said, there are three questions that are important to me here: first, like I said before, how terrible is it *in reality* (and I think we can trust the Justice department's figures there, can't we?); second, how much do these numbers affect high insurance premiums (as opposed to incompetent insurance companies, poor market decisions, greed, etc.); and third, even if tort reform is necessary (and even having read this article, I'm not quite ready to suggest that it isn't, at least in some limited and well-thought-out form), is it the end-all be-all solution to the rising costs we all worry about? It sure seems sometimes like conservatives feel it is. In the same way liberals tend to sound like they believe that if we can buy drugs from Canada, the whole world will take on a nice soft glow and everyone will love each other just a little bit better.