OPINION:
Tom Hebert’s “Congress should dismantle multibillion-dollar trial lawyer grift” (web, Feb. 21) brought to mind a live TV news interview I watched about 30 years ago. Doctors in Miami were on strike, refusing to provide emergency room duty at city hospitals as a protest against the high malpractice insurance rates they were being required to pay.
Interviewing the president of the local doctors union, the reporter asked if it was true that the malpractice insurance rates were so high because there was a small group of doctors that was constantly being sued by their patients, affecting the rates of all doctors. When the doctor said yes, the reporter asked why the union didn’t take action to have the offending doctors’ licenses suspended. The union president said they tried, but the same lawyers who sued the doctors for malpractice protected them from being suspended.
I’ve never seen reference to that interview since, and it’s a pity. Almost all civilized countries have “loser pays” laws, requiring the loser to pay the winner’s legal costs in litigation action. These laws have been extremely effective at reducing the kind of grift Mr. Hebert cites in his op-ed, for obvious reasons (i.e., plaintiffs aren’t nearly as quick to join in if they have financial risk).
But every time someone in Congress tries to initiate a bill to make such a law, the American Bar Association blocks it by claiming that it would discriminate against poor people. Wake up, America.
JERRY O’SHAUGHNESSY
Vienna, Virginia
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