The Georgia Supreme Court eliminated a key portion of an act passed by the Georgia Legislature in 2003 that changed the law of venue in medical malpractice cases.
The Georgia Constitution includes a provision about venue in multi-torfeasor cases; the Court found that a portion of the tort reform statute violated that provision. Read the opinion here.
Today the health care industry in Tennessee launches its assault on the rights of malpractice victims. More tomorrow.
Read this article to learn how tort reform has affected medical malpractice claims in Missouri.
The manufacturers and others supporting a federal asbestos bill want it bad – so bad that they think it is appropriate to engage in conduct like this.
The sponsors of this site obviously do not let truth get in the way of their position. For example, they make this point in talking about opponents to the federal legislation: “Patrick Leahy (Vermont) $704,854 received from lawyers and lobbyists in the last election cycle. The lawyers and lobbyists were his largest contributors.”
Senator Leahy supports the legislation.
Here is the text of the Governor’s State of the State Address.
You will note that the Governor did not call for restrictions on the right of patients to hold doctors and hospitals responsible for their negligence. This is a good sign. You can be assured that this was not missed by the doctors, hospitals and their insurers, and these special interest groups will be putting significant pressure on the Governor to get behind their efforts. And note that the Governor did say that he would be speaking with the Legislature “in a few weeks” about health care issues.
More specifically, he said this:
Many people – lawyers and non-lawyers – don’t worry about laws restricting the rights of victims of medical malpractice. Consumers tend to think that bad things happen to others and lawyers who do not do medical malpractice work are just glad that their practice isn’t being attacked.
Well, look at what is happening in Illinois. One year after restricting the rights of patients the GOP wants across-the-board tort reform.
I graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law, and I can tell you that the home state of Jesse Helms does not share the political philosophy of, say, Seattle.
So, imagine my surprise when I read this article from Business North Carolina.
I will save the details for you, but you get a good feel for the story from this ending: “On a gray late-November day at her home in Raleigh, Sandy Lakey considers that. Twelve summers have passed since her daughter’s life was forever altered by a product that a jury decided the manufacturer had sold knowing that it had maimed other children. “How lucky a lot of people will be,” she says, “to never find out whether they really need a lawyer.”
Here is a proposed resolution that has been introduced in the General Assembly by Senator Finney, Republican from Maryville:
SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION 523
By Finney
A RESOLUTION relative to medical malpractice reform.
WHEREAS, a fair and efficient legal system free of frivolous and abusive litigation is necessary for a vibrant economy and access to affordable health care; and
WHEREAS, rapidly increasing medical malpractice awards are driving up medical liability insurance premiums, which costs are ultimately paid by the consumers of health care services, namely patients; and
When we think of “tort reform” we usually think of insurance and corporate lobbyists trying to convince legislators to limit the ability of people to sue wrongdoers for personal injuries or wrongful death.
But the fight is much broader than that, as evidenced by this press release from the National Conference of State Legislators. Now, the FDA is considering a rule that would limit the liability of drug manufacturers from failure-to-warn suits if the drug’s label was approved by the FDA. The rule would pre-empt state law, including state common law.
The FDA has argued before that its approval of medical devices pre-empted state law claims. The claim has been rejected in drug cases in the past.
The medical liability insurers, hospitals and doctors are coming at Tennessee consumers this year in the Legislature – a full frontal assault in a effort to limit responsibility for negligence.
I have argued for years that the “reformers” use faulty numbers – and they do. The reformers have figured out that the numbers do not support what they want, so they have changed the focus of their attack to say (a) things aren’t bad in Tennessee yet but it will get bad if we don’t change the law; and (b) people are being deprived access to health care because doctors no longer practice _______ (fill in specialty) in _________ (name of city, town or hamlet).
“The sky is falling argument” is quite easy to defeat because legislators hear that the sky is falling from every lobbyist every day.
Day on Torts