September 6th, 2017

New York Attempts Real Tort Reform

When I use this blog to write about tort reform, it’s often with scare quotes around the reform. Because reform means to improve something, not destroy it. When that phrase is commonly used, however, it’s used in conjunction with finding ways to close the courthouse doors to those who’ve been injured or wronged.

But that doesn’t mean that real tort reform isn’t taking place. Just this past year we saw three bills pass the New York Legislature by wide bipartisan margins, all currently awaiting the signature of Gov. Andrew Cuomo:

A subtle change in mandatory supplemental insurance if you are hit by an uninsured or underinsured vehicle that is likely to have a very dramatic positive effect for most drivers that carry more than the minimum insurance;
A “date of discovery” rule for medical malpractice cases, so that the statute of limitations starts to run in cancer cases from the date the malpractice could reasonably have been discovered, not from the actual date of the malpractice; and
A change regarding venue, so that cases can now be brought where a collision actually took place, even if none of the parties live in that county.

But there are more bills in the hopper, and by hopper I mean pending at various points in the vast legislative maze that needs to be navigated before any bill becomes law. Sam Senders, one of my readers who does structured settlements for Arcadia Settlements Group, put together a short list that he shared on LinkedIn, that you see below.

Perhaps if people started using the phrase tort reform properly it would shine a big, bold light on those that actually try to deform the civil justice system by slamming the courthouse doors closed on consumers.

Sam’s list of bills, with my editorial comments, that constitutes real tort reform:
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1: Admissibility of an Opposing Party’s Statement: This bill modestly changes a hearsay rule by making admissible statements made by a company’s agent or employee. This change is supported by the State Courts of Superior Jurisdiction Committee and Tort Litigation Committee.

2: Apportionment of liability: This bill comes into effect in tort cases where one defendant has settled, so that the remaining defendants must elect prior to trial whether to reduce liability by the amount of the settlement or by the amount of the equitable share of damages delegated to the settler in the verdict. Currently, the law is that a non-settling defendant gets a setoff from a settling defendant equal to the greater of the actual amount paid or the percentage of liability, with the determination made after verdict. This current practice actually acts to dissuade settlements, and that runs counter to the public policy of the state which is to encourage them.

3: Expansion of economic and non-economic damages: This long overdue bill adds to the types of damages that may be awarded to people for whose benefit a wrongful death action is brought, to include grief. Currently, New York is one of the few states in the nation that, by law, refuses to recognize grief as an element of damages in wrongful death cases.

4: Expansion of judgment creditor’s rights: This bill would add a new Section 1405 to the Civil Practice Law and Rules to expressly permit a plaintiff, as judgment creditor against a defendant, to recover and collect an unsatisfied judgment or portion of a judgment directly against a third-party defendant found liable for contribution or indemnification.

5: Prohibits ex-parte interviews on personal injury and medical malpractice cases: Currently, defendants are permitted to interview a plaintiff’s treating physicians. Without a stenographer. Without the plaintiff or counsel being present or even notice being given to the plaintiff that the interview will occur. These interventions may, of course, impact treatment (many doctors want nothing do with lawyers and lawsuits) and they may also deeply affect privacy as defense lawyers may start asking questions about ailments wholly unrelated to the issues of a lawsuit. (Such as STDs, abortions, drug/alcohol issues, psychiatric treatment, etc.) This bill prohibits defense counsel from conducting such ex-parte interviews.

6: Increases trial lawyer contingency fees on medical malpractice claims: Yeah, I know, supporting this looks very self-serving. But you know what? Ever since the Legislature dramatically cut attorney fees in medical malpractice cases in the ’80s, making them some of the lowest in the nation, many injured people can’t find lawyers. Many cases are simply too expensive and too time-consuming to warrant the risk given the crappy fees, effectively giving the medical community immunity for many acts of malpractice. This bill repeals the sliding scale fee for attorneys in medical, malpractice and brings the fees in line with other personal injury and wrongful death actions (one-third of the recovery).

There it is. Six bills. Covering real tort reform.

July 1st, 2017

July 4th, Medical Malpractice, and the Bill of Rights

John Trumbull’s famous painting of the Declaration’s presentation hangs today in the Capitol Rotunda. It is collectively owned by the citizens of the United States.

A few days ago I wrote about an abomination of a bill that the House of Representatives narrowly passed, posing as tort “reform” in medical malpractice cases.

It wasn’t really “reform” (which implies improvement), but rather, a bill that seizes power from the states, grants protections and immunities to negligent people for their conduct that injures others, and foists much of the costs for those injuries out of the private sector and onto the wallets of the taxpayers.

But it did something else too, and I saved that for today. It also pissed on the Bill of Rights, specifically the Seventh Amendment.

Part of the law restricts pain and suffering awards to $250,000, and it also pushes many state actions into federal court.

The “problem” is the Seventh. It is a problem for those that want to seize federal power. Everyone else calls it a protection. Because that is what the Bill of Rights is, a list of protections.

For those that may have forgotten, the Seventh reads as follows:

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

So the Founders decided that any significant suit (with $20 being the arbitrary limit) shall have the right of trial by jury. Notice that there is no arbitrary top limit?

Yet that is what a Republican majority of the House did — it imposed an arbitrary top limit that does not exist, thereby stripping away the constitutionally protected right to a trial by jury for the most seriously injured of people if this bill should become law.

That right to a jury trial goes way, way back to the Declaration of Independence for us. It is the reason that I refer to July 2nd as Jury Independence Day, because that is the day that the Declaration of Independence was voted on and passed by the Continental Congress. It was two days later, on the 4th, that the Declaration was signed, but John Adams thought that it was the second that would be the day “solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

I post on this subject each year, and the words that follow are an adaptation of those prior messages. And the Declaration of Independence is reproduced in full after that. I like to read it in full each year at this time.

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The Declaration has, as its heart and soul, a discussion of how King George III seized too many powers. And the colonists believed — and were willing to risk their lives for the principles — that power should more justly reside with the people.

And so you will see, as but one example of “the long train of abuses and usurpations” charged against the British King that forms the Declaration’s bill of particulars, this:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

And in the subsequent Bill of Rights, there are three separate places where rights to a jury are established: In the Seventh Amendment (for civil trials), the Sixth Amendment (for criminal trials) and the Fifth Amendment (grand juries for capital or infamous crimes).

It is clear that the Founders wanted powers related to both civil and criminal fact-finding to reside with the people, and not with any head of state that may be subject to whim, politics or the pressures of the moment.

This tug-of-war over how much power should reside with government and how much with the people exists to this day. Speaking broadly, it is the conservatives who want to see a smaller, less powerful government and liberals a bigger and stronger one.

But oddly enough those principles seem to fall by the wayside in the discussion of tort “reform.” When it comes to that, some conservatives, for reasons that have never been explained to me, want to give various governmental protections and immunities to others so that wrongdoers can’t be effectively hauled before the court for accountability.

This abandonment of principle happens in the pursuit of …what? I can’t even finish the sentence as I still can’t fathom it, despite having written now on the subject for so many years.

To those conservatives that read this blog, I urge you to re-read our Declaration (and Bill of Rights) and ask yourselves why it is that, for this issue, principles of smaller and less powerful government have fallen by the wayside in favor of granting governmental protections and immunities.

And now, without further ado, Mr. Jefferson and his fellow congressmen:
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IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

January 19th, 2017

But For Video (Pedestrian Rundown Version)

The moment before this woman was run down while in the cross walk

The video is graphic. Too graphic. A woman clearly in the cross walk gets hit by a mini school bus.

The story from this Brooklyn accident at Nostrand Ave. and Ave. M, comes courtesy of the Daily News.

Why write about it? Two reasons.

First, because the initial police report claimed the woman was out of the cross walk. Buried deep in the article:

The initial police report said the victim was “not in an intersection” but the video shows her clearly walking in the crosswalk. Police could not immediately account for the discrepancy.

How and why could that “error” happen?

The victim, Ayse Ayaz, suffered four broken ribs, a broken collarbone, a broken leg, and a swollen bloody eye. Ayaz woke up in the emergency room. The information about being out of the cross walk, in other words, was unlikely to come from her.

Rather, the false information most likely came from the driver of the bus. The video was found later by a local business.

I’ve covered bus accidents in the past on this blog, on the subject of trying to alter the “facts” in favor of the bus company and against the victim. Most notably, I wrote up in 2012 how NYC Transit Authority bus drivers weren’t permitted to call the police after collisions, as required by law, but rather, had to radio in to a supervisor who would come “investigate.”

The questions for this bus collision would follow the same path: Who was the first person the driver called? Was it 911 or some dispatcher? If 911, was the story told at first different from the one told to the police later? If it was to the dispatcher first, why?

This is the nature of litigation. People will lie to protect themselves, which appears to be what happened here. Except now there is something very rare — hard proof of what actually happened.

Over the years readers have seen me approach many litigation issues here with a cynical eye, not quite trusting the statements that may be made in support of what position or another. There’s a reason.

It’s not in the least bit uncommon for a driver to tell a wholly different story than the victim, or the eyewitness standing on the corner, if that person actually sticks around and the police actually write that person’s name down in a report.

I know, you think the cops always write down the names of witnesses. It ain’t so. And the failure to take a couple of minutes to do so can cause years of litigation.

In fact, this same scenario happened to me, when I witnessed a pedestrian hit by a car. I gave my name to both the driver and to the cops. And you know what? I was told by one of the attorneys at my deposition that the cops never wrote my name/number down in the report. If the driver didn’t have my name and number also, this piece of evidence (my eyewitness account) would have been lost to the actual participants.

If not for this video in this bus-pedestrian collision, the bus driver would no doubt have an insurance company attorney accusing the pedestrian of being a liar when she claimed she was in the cross walk. She would, in effect, have been victimized twice.

I said there were two reasons to write, and now comes the second: This is all something to think about when you hear people talk about a “litigation explosion” and tort “reform,” as if problems were caused by the victims themselves.

It’s worth nothing that if the injuries of the victim are bad, it wouldn’t be a private insurance company paying for the losses. Not only could the victim be deprived of full compensation, but also, some of those costs of caring for the injured could be shifted to you and I, the taxpayers.

And so it is that I started this piece with a bus-pedestrian collision. But end it at a public policy discussion, which is important due to the shift in the political winds.

January 6th, 2015

On Suing and Being Sued

A new graphic, for lawyers that bring idiotic defamation cases: The dunce cap.

So I bring lawsuits for a living. And I’ve repeatedly railed against the tort “reformers” that seek to limit suits.

But now I’ve been sued twice in idiotic defamation suits for my writings on this blog, both of which were thrown out in the pleadings stage. The first was Rakofsky v. Internet and the second was by Dr. Michael J. Katz.

It’s reasonable to ask (as Daniel Fisher did yesterday in Forbes) since I’ve now been on the other side of the “v” twice: Have my thoughts changed on the subject?

And the answer is no.

True, these were both a pain in the ass and a diversion of both time and resources for me.

But the answer to such suits is not to close the courthouse doors by offering protections and immunities against suits — for the real damage and danger there is closing the doors to legitimate issues.

No, the real solution is punishment with the proper use of sanctions. In both cases against me the judges refused to sanction, despite the fact that the cases were such dogs.

We have, I think, a judicial culture in New York against punishing frivolous and idiotic behavior in our courts. Compare, for example this federal judge in California lowering the boom on a frivolous suit against the National Law Journal that was also reporting on courthouse activities.

The laws are on the books (see CPLR 8303-a). They may not be strong, but the Legislature put them there. That is the place to seek redress for the boneheaded suit. Not closing courthouse doors.

Updated: See New York Needs More Robust Anti-SLAPP Legislation

July 2nd, 2014

Power to the People (A Declaration of Independence)

John Trumbull’s famous painting of the Declaration’s presentation hangs today in the Capitol Rotunda. It is owned by the citizenry of the United States.

Today is July 2nd. On this date in 1776 the Continental Congress voted to declare its independence from Great Britain and a new nation was born. John Adams thought that the 2nd of July would be “solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

The Declaration of Independence was formally adopted and signed two days later, and it is the 4th that we celebrate. (And it was on the 4th in 1826 that Adams and Thomas Jefferson both passed into the next world.)

But aside from re-publishing that extraordinary document originally crafted by Jefferson, as I do below and I do each year, I wanted to take a moment to discuss tort “reform.” Because it is very much connected to our independence.

The Declaration has, as its heart and sole, a discussion of how King George III seized too many powers. And the colonists believed — and were willing to risk their lives for the principles — that power should more justly reside with the people.