Trial Lawyers and a ‘Crisis’ Misdiagnosed
Roanoke Times & World News
September 5, 2004

When the ruffian Dick said to the rebel Jack Cade in King Henry VI, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," Shakespeare bequeathed a line that arouses certain dark enthusiasms even in the current age.

Maybe that should be especially in the current age, considering the shrill crescendo that calls for hobbling the nefarious trial lawyers who are preying on the land. For those most eager to impose such hobbling, the words trial lawyers are best pronounced sneeringly with seven dipthongs if possible, but at least five.

Most everyone but those trying to keep from being sued aren't too sure why, at the sound of those words, eyes narrow into slits of rage and neck veins emerge in a purple bulge. The reaction, however, tends to afflict Republicans in general but business and corporate magnates in particular.

…

Consider findings by Weiss Ratings, an independent insurance-rating agency in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., that between 1991 and 2002, states with caps on noneconomic damage awards - as in Virginia - saw median doctors' malpractice insurance premiums rise 48 percent - a greater increase than in states without caps.

According to a 2003 Americans for Insurance Reform study covering the last 30 years, malpractice claims in relation to general medical inflation - both in numbers of lawsuits and in dollars - have been essentially flat since 1985.

In other words, the docs are getting gouged, but they're misdiagnosing the gougers.

For a copy of the complete article, contact AIR.