Lawsuits: An American tradition

Now that President-elect George W. Bush is all set to move into the White House, we can look forward to some culminations from his visions.\n Take, for instance, his ideas for tort reform. Did you know that America would save billions of dollars a year if only we made it harder for people to sue? I know, I know. That is about as un-American as SUVs that get more than 20 miles per gallon. But Bush claims he saved his state more than $3 billion by doing it and, by George, he is going to do it for us, too.\n I have searched far and wide to find an impartial expert to discuss the pros and cons of this concept and looked no further than the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. Believe it or not, Richard H. Middleton, Jr., president of ATLA, had a few problems with the scheme, which a lackey divulged to me by reading aloud from a press release.\n "Governor Bush has collected unprecedented amounts of money from the tobacco, insurance and manufacturing behemoths, which have spent billions of dollars trying to shift the cost of injuries they cause to those they hurt and to every American taxpayer. So, it is not surprising that Governor Bush proposes protecting those corporate special interests from legal liability. If he truly believed in states' rights as well as corporate and personal responsibility, Governor Bush would abandon his efforts on behalf of corporate welfare in the guise of so-called tort reform and support the legal rights of all Americans to seek justice in the most envied legal system in the world."\n (I can't make this stuff up.)\n "No where else in the world are injured consumers and workers so empowered to hold wrongdoers legally accountable, and it is tragic that Governor Bush and the special interests which support him would actively seek to take those rights away from Americans,'' Middleton said in the press release.\n Sorry about the length, but they told me that they would sue me if I didn't print every word.\n Instead of trying to limit lawsuits, the government should encourage them. Workers should sue the automobile industry for moving their jobs to Mexico. Blacks should sue whites for five acres and a mule. Indians should sue the government for smallpox and alcohol. Women should sue men for centuries of sexism. Oh wait, they already do.\n My point is that America today solves more social problems in court than through taxation with representation. I think Georgie and five Supreme Court Justices would agree.\n Take one of our society's most heated issues, gun control, for example. While little kids go around blowing each other's heads off, Washington is bogged down in a useless debate between morality and the Constitution. Meanwhile, the threat of lawsuits has forced Smith and Wesson to switch to a policy of providing trigger locks with every new gun to avoid massive monetary damages.\n In response, the gun industry united to conspire against S&W to drive away business, but, thanks to the legal system, California, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and Maryland have joined together to thwart the industry's efforts by launching an antitrust investigation into its practices.\n I say that we should be able to sue the gun industry for emotional distress the next time we see another school or office shooting on the news. I will even take it one step further and say that I should be able to sue the gun industry if I drop a gun on my toe. What have they done for us?\n Finally, the biggest area in which lawsuits have brought change in the last 20 years is the workplace. Lawsuits probably save more lives than the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the unions combined. Since 1980, fatalities on the job have fallen 20 percent, according to the U.S. government's Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries. I know that the legal system can take credit for this decline in deaths because I have personally seen its effect on the most lethal industry in which to work, construction.\n I worked in the industry for two years, and I started to believe that the companies I worked for cared more about my safety than I did.\n For example, one company enforced safety harness rules with threats of firings. The rule was, if you are more than 10 feet off the ground, you must have a harness and be tied to something solid. This company insisted on everyone wearing one if they worked four feet off the ground because one employee won $80,000 from them by falling off the second rung of a ladder.\n Every job I went on was like this, and not once did I see anyone from OSHA or have to follow union rules. The only watchdog these companies had was the lawsuit.\n In today's corporate culture with its sold-out politicians and where we are nothing more than bank accounts, the only way we can get back at the weasels is to sue their pants off if we break a nail. So go out and tell our new president if he messes with the only part of our government that still works for us, we will see him in court.