Saturday, November 10, 2007

Read me first

I am a proponent of "tort reform" because I believe it is, on balance, in society's best interests.

"Tort reform"  is a vernacular.  I would explain the matter as this:  There is wrongdoing in society that causes damage and injury.  There is a societal interest in providing compensation to harmed persons and also a societal interest in deterring wrongdoing.  The "reform" that is sought concerns how class action lawsuits and certain other private civil litigation operate.

The most powerful force against tort reform are the plaintiffs' lawyers, because it will lessen their riches and power.

For a number of years I have undertaken efforts to try to advance the cause of tort reform.

The purpose of this blog is to memorialize those efforts and be a continuation of them. Possibly this can contribute to greater effectiveness in my efforts.

The entries under the B. General label group, read in chronological order (which is from the "bottom" entry to the "top" entry in the group), give background and a general idea of the history of my activities. Entries in other label groups give more information about particular activities that I have directed towards persons or organizations that are identified by the label and about other activities and subjects identified by the label that are self-explanatory. The entries under many of these label groups should also be read from "bottom" to "top".  To see only entries in a label group, click on the label group on the left hand side of this page.

Briefly, the main phases and things I have done over the past 20 years are:

1. Starting in about 1994, I have attempted a fair amount of "letter to the editor" writing and "op/ed" submissions to newspapers.  These developed into my versions of the "case against plaintiffs' lawyers."

2. In the 2004 election, with the vice presidential candidacy of trial lawyer John Edwards, "tort reform" was a heightened issue in the public's mind.  I made an extensive effort to try to get law professors to make "op/ed piece" submissions to The Wall Street Journal.

3. I and family members have received notices of numerous class action lawsuits of which we were members of the plaintiff classes.  I filed objections with the Court in some of these and have tried to express objections regarding some class action lawsuits of which I was not a member of the plaintiff class.

4. Plaintiffs' lawyers are dependent on entity level liability in order to gain their riches, and holding liable  individual officers and employees who are culpable in corporate wrongdoing is not in the interest of plaintiffs' lawyers.  Starting in 2005, I have developed a line of attack geared off this.  This line of attack sent me off into the domain of business ethics and the world of ethics and compliance professionals, with a view to persuading those in that field to the effect that what was going on in the private civil liability and class action lawsuits was detrimental to their ethics and compliance mission.  I particularly drafted this article Does the civil liability system undermine business ethics? to try to make persuasion with.

5. I started this blog in 2007.

6. In 2011, I tried to formalize my work in this project to find out what lawmakers, judges, regulators, state attorneys general, criminal prosecutors, corporate management, ethics and compliance officers, corporation lawyers, various academics, plaintiffs' lawyers, defense lawyers, tort reform organizations, and consumer protection organizations, think concerning the subject of the effectiveness of entity level liability versus individual officer and employee liability for deterring corporate wrongdoing.

7. Starting in late 2012, I have worked on filing amicus objections in two very large, very similar securities class action lawsuits involving Citigroup and Bank of America, which I have tried to publicize on various fronts.  Contemporaneously, there was a third similar, but smaller, class action lawsuit, of which I was a member of the plaintiff class, and I filed an objection there.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

John Adams, verbatim:

"There are only two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt."

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