Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Society's balanced interests

Once it is recognized and accepted that there is no "free lunch" and all litigation and settlement payments ulitmately come out of the pockets of individuals, society's balanced interests can be properly focused on. One the one side, each member of society can be an injured party who desires rights to sue a wrongdoer who has caused his injury. On the other hand, since all payments ultimately come out of the pockets of individuals, frequently in the form of small amounts coming out of the pockets of many individuals, there is a societal interest that such situation not be exploited and abused, and that there needs to be oversight to try to prevent that.

Society thus has legitimate intersts on both sides of the "tort reform" question, and proper balancing of those interests is called for.

Plaintiffs' lawyers have no such balanced interests, and their interest is solely on the side of more litigation rather than less, and more and bigger payments through litigation and settlements rather than less.

In the debate that goes on, it is important to keep in mind that society has legitimate interests on both sides of the debate, plaintiffs' lawyers have an interest only on one side, and all plaintiffs' lawyers positions are deserving of skepticism and close scrutiny about whether such positions represent proper balancing of the societal interests on both sides of the debate or whether they represent merely trying to advance the one sided plaintiffs' lawyers interests.

Plaintiffs' lawyers have tried to frame the debate as being them on behalf of the "little guy" against "big business" or against "rich greedy doctors." This is an excellent example of their bias at work. In trying to frame the debate the way they do, the lawyers try to obscure that all payments ultimately come out of pockets of individuals and to obscure whose pockets payments are coming out of. It is true that payments in litigation may come out of the pockets of doctors and Presidents of corporations, but they also come out of pockets of patients (through increased medical charges and insurance premiums), customers (through higher prices), lower level employees (through reduced wages), and retired persons (through reduction in values of retirement plans). Plaintiffs' lawyers will avoid getting into any discussion or analyis of that when they try to frame the debate as being them on behalf of the "litttle guy" and, in so doing, they reveal their bias that disables them from engaging in a balancing of societal interests and reaching positions that advance society's best interests as opposed to their own one sided interest.

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