Tort Truth
Rutberg and Associates - We Keep Our Clients Well-Informed
At Rutberg & Associates, we believe in keeping up to date in all areas of law, including the many legal issues surrounding today's courtroom. The media presents many false statements regarding tort law and the current battle over Tort Reform. Our firm is dedicated to keeping clients informed on all legal issues. For more information on current legal issues, visit the pages below.
Mcdonald's
Scalding Coffee Case
Debunking
Urban Legends About the Civil Justice System
Myths
and FACTS About the Civil Justice System
Tort
Filing and Trial Statistics 2000
A
Look Behind Newsweek's Series 'Lawsuit Hell'
The
TRUTH About The Civil Justice System
Tort
Reform - Those Damn Trial Lawyers
Reports
of "Outrageous Cases" are Lies.
"Tort reform threatens right to sue" Poughkeepsie Journal
By Martin P. Rutberg
Reports on lawsuits are not always accurate. Much of what you hear about personal injury law is misleading. It seems in style to say fraudulent claims are common, the jury system doesn't work and there are too many lawsuits.
Truth is, fraudulent claims are rare: Most people who sue have good reason. Jurors don't award compensation
for nothing. There is no "litigation explosion."
No part of the legal system more protects ordinary people than personal injury law and our juries.
The system works better than the headlines suggest. Newspapers report the occasional "big verdict" without
enough details about the evidence. They never publish the results of appeals, which often reduce
awards. They don't report thousands of cases in which juries award nothing.
Consider the recent case against McDonald's by a woman burned by coffee in her car.
The media reported "$2.7 million for hot coffee," suggesting the jury was out to lunch.
Some facts:
- She suffered third-degree burns to her thighs and vaginal area, requiring the same surgeries as fire victims.
- She is permanently disfigured
- The jury awarded $160,000 compensation (finding her partly "at fault" for placing the coffee cup in her lap—something we've all done before).
- The jury awarded $2.7 million "punitive damages," representing two days' coffee profits for McDonald's. That award was reduced to $480,000 by the appeals court.
"Punitive damages" mean the jury found reckless or intentional misconduct. There was a "confidentiality agreement," so certain details can't be known for sure. Courtroom observers indicate 1) McDonald's knew the coffee was too hot because hundreds of people were burned, but they chose to protect profits. (Apparently you get more flavor from less coffee brewed extremely hot) 2) This coffee was so hot it burned through flesh on contact.
You might disagree with the jury, but the award was far from the multimillions reported. The jury wasn't "crazy." The injuries were real; the appeals process worked. The truth was distorted because news reports omitted information.
Fewer Lawsuits Filed
Sometimes critics simply repeat false claims. Here are facts we don't hear from "tort reform" politicians:
- Americans today file fewer suits per total population than during the Colonial period (Rand study, 1991).
- Injury cases are less than 2 percent of the caseload in state courts (Rand study, 1991).
- The Congressional Budget Office says the total spent and awarded in medical negligence litigation is less than 1 percent of the nation's health-care costs.
- Injury claims are not causing congestion in the courts. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts says the vast majority of civil cases are businesses suing businesses.
- The combined annual cost of legal fees, insurance premiums, settlements and verdicts is less than Americans spend on cigarettes and half of what is spent on alcohol (Randy study, 1991).
Of course, there is room for improvement. There are inefficiencies, excessive verdicts and inadequate verdicts, not all corrected by appeals. We can improve the system, but let's not throw away constitutional rights. People talking about limits on verdicts or mandatory arbitration are taking away your right to have your case decided by fellow citizens. That puts your fate in the political arena.
When I hear someone say the system is bad, I know they never yet needed the protection it offers.
We may not see the value of the civil justice system unless we look for it. If we let them change
the laws upon which the system rests, we may not know what we had until it's gone.
Please contact Rutberg and Associates for more information.
REPORTS OF "OUTRAGEOUS CASES" ARE
LIES
as confirmed by Snopes.com
Stella Awards
Claim: Six outrageous-but-real lawsuits showcase the need for tort
reform.
Status: False.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2001]
This is what's wrong with the world:
1. January 2000: Kathleen Robertson of Austin Texas was awarded
$780,000.00 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping
over a toddler who was running amuck inside a furniture store. The
owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict,
considering the misbehaving tyke was Ms. Robertson's son.
2. June 1998: A 19 year old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won
$74,000.00 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran his hand over
with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice someone was
at the wheel of the car whose hubcap he was trying to steal.
3. October 1998: A Terrence Dickson of Bristol Pennsylvania was
exiting a house he finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not
able to get the garage door to go up, because the automatic door
opener was malfunctioning. He couldn't re-enter the house because
the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it
shut. The family was on vacation, so Mr. Dickson found himself
locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi
he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. This upset Mr. Dickson,
so he sued the homeowner's insurance claiming the situation caused
him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of half a
million dollars and change.
4. October 1999: Jerry Williams of Little Rock Arkansas was awarded
$14,500.00 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks
by his next door neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its
owner's fenced-in yard, as was Mr. Williams. The award was less than
sought after because the jury felt the dog may have been provoked by
Mr. Williams who, at the time, was shooting it repeatedly with a
pellet gun.
5. May 2000: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber
Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania $113,500.00 after she slipped on a
spilled soft drink and broke her coccyx. The beverage was on the
floor because Ms. Carson threw it at her boyfriend 30 seconds
earlier during an argument.
6. December 1997: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware successfully
sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell
from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front
teeth. This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through
the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover
charge. She was awarded $12,000.00 and dental expenses.
Origins: This "and you wonder what's wrong with the world today?" whinge
appeared on the Internet in May 2001. All of the entries in the list are
fabrications: a search for news stories about each of these cases failed
to turn up anything, as did a search for each law case.
The earliest version concluded with a seventh item that has since been
snipped away, likely after someone noticed it was the venerable microwaved
poodle legend. Its inclusion would have immediately called into question
the truthfulness of the other six cases for any number of folks familiar
with urban legends. The remaining six were still false, but they weren't
as obviously false as the following poodle tale and thus wouldn't have set
the alarm bells ringing:
7. And just so you know that cooler heads do occasionally prevail: Kenmore
Inc., the makers of Dorothy Johnson's microwave, were found not liable for
the death of Mrs. Johnson's poodle after she gave it a bath and attempted
to dry it by putting the poor creature in her microwave for, "just a few
minutes, on low," The case was quickly dismissed.
A version of the list that began circulating in the spring of 2002 has yet
another urban legend included as its final item, the venerable cruise
control legend:
In November 2000, Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32 foot Winnebago
motor home. On his first trip home, having joined the freeway, he set the
cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the
back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the Winnie left
the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not
advising him in the handbook that he could not actually do this. He was
awarded $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago.
Some versions bear the following footer, although many omit it:
PLEASE ASSIST OUR LAW OFFICES IN A TORT REFORM PROGRAM. WE ARE ATTEMPTING
TO PUT A STOP TO THESE INSANE JURY AWARDS BY SENDING THIS E-MAIL OUT TO
THE PUBLIC IN THE HOPES OF SWAYING PUBLIC OPINION. PLEASE FORWARD IT TO
EVERY EMAIL ADDRESS YOU KNOW.
Mary R. Hogelmen, Esq.
Law Offices of Hogelmen, Hogelmen, and Thomas
Dayton Ohio
There is no law firm of Hogelmen, Hogelmen, and Thomas in Dayton, Ohio, as
a call to directory assistance quickly confirmed. This detail was included
to give the mailing credibility in the eyes of those who received it: if a
law firm had pulled this list together to build grassroots support for its
tort reform program, then it went without saying a pack of lawyers had
properly researched each item and were guaranteeing the information
provided. But of course this detail was as false as everything else in the
e-mail.
Speaking about implied credibility, we note that the "outrageous lawsuits"
list has made it into the newspapers at times, which only works to add to
the perception that the information given in it is reliable. In June 2002,
the New York Daily News presented it solely as an e-mail it had received,
making no statements as to its likeliness to be real or detailing any
attempts that publication might have made to verify any of the entries.
(Had such attempts been made, the Daily News would have quickly found the
article you're now reading, which originally appeared on this site a full
ten months prior to the Daily News piece.)
Fake or not, a list of outrageous awards bestowed upon those whose actions
— nay, misbehaviors — had brought them to grief would fall upon very
receptive ears because current feeling is very much against large jury
awards for frivolous claims. This e-mail preaches to the choir in that it
"confirms" what is already deeply believed.
Numerous states have enacted measures to reform their civil law systems in
response to the problem of frivolous lawsuits and runaway jury awards.
Tort reform usually amounts to placing a cap on punitive damage awards,
making the state's joint-and-several liability law more equitable, and
limiting judge and court shopping (which means cases are tried in front of
whomever they've been assigned to rather than the judge the plaintiff
figures will be most sympathetic).
Our current overly-litigious society is not merely an offense to common
sense — it costs everyone money, though most are not aware they pay to
support this madness through a trickle down to consumers in the form of
markedly higher prices. This trickle down accounts, for example, for $8 of
an $11.50 diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT) vaccine, $191 of a $578
tonsillectomy, $170 of a $1,000 motorized wheelchair, and $3,000 of an
$18,000 heart pacemaker.
Though the cases described in the e-mail are fake, real lawsuits of equal
silliness can be found in abundance. An equally impressive list could
easily have been compiled by anyone with access to a news database and a
few moments to spare. For instance:
In March 1995, a San Diego man unsuccessfully attempted to sue the city
and Jack Murphy Stadium for $5.4 million over something than can only be
described as a wee problem: Robert Glaser claimed the stadium's unisex
bathroom policy at a Billy Joel and Elton John concert caused him
embarrassment and emotional distress thanks to the sight of a woman
using a urinal in front of him. He subsequently tried "six or seven"
other bathrooms in the stadium only to find women in all of them. He
asserted he "had to hold it in for four hours" because he was too
embarrassed to share the public bathrooms with women.
A San Carlos, California, man sued the Escondido Public Library for $1.5
million. His dog, a 50-pound Labrador mix, was attacked November 2000 by
the library's 12-pound feline mascot, L.C., (also known as Library Cat).
The case was heard in January 2004, with the jury finding for the
defendant. In a further case which was resolved in July 2004, the
plaintiff in the previous suit was ordered to pay the city $29,362.50,
which amounted to 75% of its legal fees associated with that case.
In 1994, a student at the University of Idaho unsuccessfully sued that
institution over his fall from a third-floor dorm window. He'd been
mooning other students when the window gave way. It was contended the
University failed to provide a safe environment for students or to
properly warn them of the dangers inherent to upper-story windows.
In 1993, McDonald's was unsuccessfully sued over a car accident in New
Jersey. While driving, a man who had placed a milkshake between his
legs, leaned over to reach into his bag of food and squeezed the
milkshake container in the process. When the lid popped off and spilled
half the drink in his lap, this driver became distracted and ran into
another man's car. That man in turn tried to sue McDonald's for causing
the accident, saying the restaurant should have cautioned the man who
had hit him against eating while driving.
Although the cases cited above were all eventually dismissed, they still
managed to work their way at least partway through our court system. When
we hear such stories, it's hard not to be rabidly in favor of tort reform
— these kinds of cases make it appear that the idiots have taken over the
asylum and only the rapid institution of some rules is going to bring
things back into a semblance of sanity. Yet this solution is not all
skittles and beer; many see such changes as potentially denying those in
need of legal remedy their day in court and refusing them their right to
be heard. The cap on jury awards is also viewed by some as unfair to the
seriously injured, who may well require a large sum to afford the cost of
living with whatever disability someone else's negligence or recklessness
left them with. Capped awards are also scant deterrent to large
corporations who could easily afford the judgements against them and
therefore have little reason to mend their ways. Big Business is poised to
benefit under tort reform in that it will no longer need to fear the
courts. It can also be argued that the need for tort reform is overblown.
Only rarely do ridiculous lawsuits result in windfalls for the plaintiff;
these cases are almost always either thrown out or the judgement goes for
the defendant. Some celebrated "outrageous" suits wherein judgement went
for the plaintiff prove upon closer examination to be far less
"outrageous" than originally presented in the media. (For example, the
"woman scalded by hot coffee" suit, which at first blush looked like the
height of frivolity proved to be a perfectly legitimate action taken
against a corporation that knew, thanks to a string of similar scaldings
it had quietly been paying off, that its coffee was not just hot, but
dangerously hot. The Consumer Attorneys of California provides a good
description of this case).
Tort reform thus has both its advocates and its adversaries. On the one
hand, we bridle at the thought of the terminally clueless being rewarded
for their folly — that strikes us as just plain wrong. We also fear for
the continued wellbeing of the small- to mid-sized business which can ill
afford to fend off one frivolous lawsuit after another and thus stands in
danger of being litigated to death. Also, even when litigants do not
prevail, costs associated with their suits rain down onto the average
citizen through his taxes (some of which underwrite the judicial system)
and through increased prices for goods produced by firms who had to mount
legal defences. Yet on the other hand, we don't want to see those who have
legitimate cause denied their right to sue (or in the case of the
seriously injured, their right to sue for an appropriate amount). We also
don't want to see corporations run unchecked, free to turn out whatever
dangerous product they like because the combination of capped awards and
their deep pockets render them bulletproof.
It's a complicated issue, one not made any easier to make sense of by
lists of fake cases of horrendous miscarriages of justice. One has to
wonder why someone is so busy trying to stir up outrage and who or what
that outrage would ultimately benefit.
Barbara "herded through the grapevine" Mikkelson
Additional information: George W. Bush's first act upon becoming the
Governor of Texas was to reform that state's civil justice system. In
January 1995, just after being sworn in, he convened a session of the
Legislature to tackle tort reform. Within weeks he signed bills to limit
punitive damages to $750,000, cut down on "venue shopping" for favorable
judges and juries, and made it easier for judges to impose sanctions on
plaintiffs who file frivolous suits.
Last updated: 28 January 2005
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2007
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
Sources:
Associated Press. "Men's Room Invasion Prompts Suit."
The Fresno Bee. 1 April 1995 (p. F8).
Coile, Zachary. "Bush's Formula to Win Over Business."
The San Francisco Examiner. 2 October 2000 (p. A1).
Elias, Paul. "So What's a Little Litigation Between Friends?"
The Recorder. 14 December 1999 (Court Watch; p. 4).
Heller, Jonathan. "Man Seeks $1.5 Million from City; Says Library
Cat Attacked His Dog."
The San Diego Union-Tribune. 5 May 2001 (p. B2).
Littlefield, Dana. "Suit Over Library Cat's Attack Bites Back at
disabled Dog Owner."
The San Diego Union-Tribune. 31 July 2004 (p. NC3).
Perkins, Joseph. "We All Pay When Others File Frivolous Lawsuits."
The San Diego Union-Tribune. 18 May 2001 (p. B7).
Perry, Tony. "A One-Man Campaign for More Women's Restrooms."
Los Angeles Times. 18 August 1995 (p. A3).
Riffel, James. "Jury Rejects Claims of Disabled Man Against City
for Cat Attack."
City News Service. 30 January 2004.
Vogt, Andrea. "Ludicrous Lawsuit Against University of Idaho Rears
Its Ugly Head."
Lewiston Morning Tribune. 2 August 1994 (p. A1).
New Jersey Lawyer. "Moral of a Burger Suit: Don't Eat and Drive."
15 November 1993 (p. 3).
[New York] Daily News. "Mighty Quinn."
25 June 2002 (Sports, p. 63).