Trial Lawyers Now Even Have New Candidates Promising to Introduce Favored Legislation
October 13, 2004
Time was-and not so long ago at that-when the Democratic Party used to cater to the concerns of America’s working men and women. Now it caters to some of their major oppressors-personal injury lawyers.
Someone once described personal injury lawyers as American’s only real parasitic profession, and dozens of recent examples suggest that’s not mere hyperbole.
Among the most egregious is the fact that lawsuits now force obstetricians in almost every state to pay malpractice insurance premiums of more than $100,000 a year for the privilege of delivering babies. No wonder many expectant mothers now are forced to make roundtrips of more than 100 miles for pre-natal care and deliveries. Congress keeps promising to pass tort reform, but $30-million or so in lawyers’ campaign contributions each election cycle effectively thwart every attempt.
Now even new Senate candidates are getting into the act. Former Alaska Governor and current U.S. Senate candidate, Tony Knowles hasn’t even been elected yet, but he’s already courting voters with the claim that he will pass a new federal law forcing oil-giant Exxon to cough-up additional billions to atone for the still-rancorous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Knowles pledges that once elected he will introduce federal legislation to short-cut the proper legal process and make Exxon pay billions of dollars in contested punitive damages before its legal appeals are exhausted.
Such a law would be popular with some in Alaska, where eco-activists still scapegoat Exxon in attempts to rekindle the memory of the accidental oil spill. More than 32,000 people are actually waiting for Exxon checks. But Exxon has long since paid $2 billion in cleanup costs, and another $1 billion in federal and state awards for actual damages to fishermen, Eskimo communities, resorts, and others that sustained damage.
What’s at issue is a record-breaking jury award of $5 billion levied against Exxon in 1994 for punitive damages-an award meant to cover rather vague psychological impacts of the spill such as severe depression, generalized anxiety, social and community conflicts and new cases of substance abuse.
When an Anchorage jury made the award, Exxon’s lawyers declared they considered it outrageous, and promised to exercise their legal rights and appeal it through the whole court system.
The court fight has dragged on now for a decade, and the $5 billion has compounded with interest into $7 billion. However, a federal appeals court has now ruled that the original award was, indeed, too high, and cut it to $4 billion, plus interest.
Exxon is still fighting. But Knowles says, “It’s unconscionable that the world’s most profitable company can delay paying its debts. As your U.S. Senator, I will introduce legislation that will force Exxon to settle these legitimate claims by removing the company’s incentive to keep foot-dragging in the courts.”
But how does Exxon owe a debt while the award is still under appeal? Does Knowles not believe Exxon also owes a debt to its investors and employees or the investors and employees of its many suppliers and vendors? And what about the millions of retirees and workers about to retire whose pension funds hold large amounts of Exxon stock?
Russian President Putin is now paying a heavy price for grabbing the assets of its biggest oil company, Yukos, in a tax dispute that was settled by government fiat. Foreign investors are staying away in droves, fearing the grabber-barons in the Kremlin. Prices for Russian assets are depressed and Russian economic growth is languishing-in large part because the Putin government violated its own legal processes.
I learned in high school civics that the U.S. Constitution forbids making something illegal after it’s been done. Is Knowles proposing an ex post facto law? How long would that constitutional issue drag through the courts?
It’s bad enough when the legal process lets trial lawyers impose millions of dollars in unwarranted costs on the public through “junk medicine” and “speculative science” with no roots in reality. But passing special laws to impose additional penalties on corporations deemed to be politically-incorrect could soon throttle economic growth and turn America into a banana republic.
The Senate Democrats who do bidding for some of the nation’s most venal personal injury lawyers piously profess to revere our nation’s legal processes. Wielding legal sledgehammers against successful and productive American corporations is a strange way of showing it. Hopefully, Alaskan voters will send the opportunistic Knowles a loud and clear message this election day: Namely, that it’s better to live in a nation under the constraints of law than one under the control of personal injury lawyers.
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