Once again, we see children losing a favorite activity because personal injury lawyers can’t resist the urge to sue a school.
This time, a lawyer in West Virginia sued the Cabell County school district after a child was injured while using a swing set at one of their schools. The district settled the lawsuit for $20,000 and is worried about more lawsuits, so they are removing all swing sets from all the schools there.
The safety manager for the school district was quoted in the Huntington Herald Dispatch saying, “In talking with our lawyers about this issue, they told us we might as well pull out our checkbooks if we’re going to continue using mulch around swing sets. These types of lawsuits are apparently occurring around the country.” See the full story here.
It wasn’t long ago when schools were on the leading edge of safety efforts if they put mulch around swing sets. Mulch is softer than the regular old ground human beings have been landing on for centuries when jumping off swings. But nowadays, injuries that have been part of life since the invention of the swing are simply fodder for trial lawyers trying to make a buck at everyone else’s expense. The plaintiff lawyers argue the landing area should have been softer, but it seems that no matter what schools do, the landing area is never soft enough.
Unfortunately, the real losers here are the children. They can’t vote and don’t write letters to the editor, so they’ll have to find something else to do rather than swing on a swing set at recess. We’ve seen this with community swimming pools, Little League baseball, parks and recreation areas run by local governments, and even the Girl Scouts are not immune from the lawsuit epidemic. Folks, this is all about quality of life – are we really better off with all these lawsuits? Of course not.
Fortunately, the rest of us can speak up and try to make sure that swing sets don’t vanish from the schools our own children attend. What can you do? How about ask your candidates for legislative and judicial seats how they feel about this issue. Do they support reasonable limits on lawsuits? Do they accept contributions from trial lawyer associations?
I’ve debated presidents of state trial lawyer associations many times, and never –not once — have they admitted there is a problem with frivolous lawsuits in America. I wonder where they’ll be when the swing sets are being removed from schools in Cabell County. Probably filing another lawsuit.
Many thanks to the Washington Times for publishing my op-ed about a disturbing new development I wrote about on this blog a few weeks ago: lawsuit taxes. The online version is available here.
There have been some insightful comments by Times readers since the article was published, and I especially like what John Y has to say about the silver lining of lawsuit taxes like the one levied in Detroit this summer:
“When a special tax is levied by fiat, that will get the taxpayers’ attention. Maybe then, the citizenry will see the light and the cost, and give legislators the heat they so richly deserve for coddling up to the lawyers.”
While I’m reluctant to wish lawsuit taxes on anyone else around the country, the old saying “Out of sight, out of mind” certainly seems to apply to lawsuit taxes. We’ll just keep working to make this costly problem a top-of-the-mind issue for our elected leaders.
Plaintiff lawyers suing oil companies over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are asking Congress to enact changes that would very likely bring them a bigger piece of the lawsuit cash pie at the expense of the victims in this disaster. Such a move would be another disaster for the thousands of people who have suffered catastrophic losses because of this spill.
In a recent editorial, the Wall Street Journal pointed out that one of the plaintiff bars’ closest allies, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, went to Congress to lobby for a change in law that would allow him and other trial lawyers to sue Gulf oil spill companies in state court instead of federal court. So, why does he want to change the rules in the middle of the game?
Read the WSJ editorial here to understand how this change could translate into huge contingency fees for the trial bar. In short, Hood and the plaintiff lawyers believe the state judges they’ve helped elect in Mississippi would be more willing to approve settlements they’ve designed and requested reaping them multi-million dollar fees – the kind of over-the-top fees that got them in hot water with federal judges in lawsuits they filed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
I pointed out in my most recent “Lets Be Fair” commentary that the civil justice system’s first job is to make sure that those who were hurt because of the Gulf oil spill get the compensation they deserve, not make trial lawyers richer. But Mr. Hood and his allies seem to be focusing on how to increase their share of the billions in dollars that will be paid out by BP and other companies.
Whether Congress sides with the plaintiffs’ bar or victims remains to be seen, but we agree with the Wall Street Journal when it says “Mr. Hood offered no compelling reason in his Congressional testimony that the lawsuits against the oil giant belong outside of federal court. The only reason would be to allow Mr. Hood and his ‘friends’ greater ability to stack the deck against the industry and the rule of law.”
If the trial lawyers are allowed to arrange sweetheart deals in state courts, every dollar in extra fees they are able to negotiate for themselves will come at the expense of victims who truly deserve the money.
The “hidden” lawsuit tax we all pay because we live in the most lawsuit-happy society on earth isn’t hiding in Detroit anymore.
It’s right there in plain sight for residents of the Motor City who got a property tax bill this summer. The Detroit Public School district has had to pay so much money for lawsuits against the district over the past year that officials there put a special “judgment tax levy” on the most recent property tax bill. Read about it in the Detroit Free Press here.
Now, I’ve been talking about the hidden lawsuit tax for years, but this action by the Detroit schools underscores the fact that we all pay for lawsuits, even if we’re never directly sued. Sure, the lawsuit tax isn’t a line most of us have seen on the receipts we’ve received when purchasing goods and services, but that is beginning to change.
Cities across the country are reporting record payouts for lawsuits, and with budgets getting squeezed, experts believe special lawsuit taxes may spread if the problem of lawsuit abuse isn’t addressed. Local governments aren’t the only ones beginning to pass on the cost of lawsuits, either.
In an earlier post on this blog, I revealed that the hugely popular City Museum in St. Louis has added a charge to its tickets to pay for lawsuits against the museum. Start adding up all of these special taxes and surcharges, and it’s easy to see how the Pacific Research Institute came up with a “tort tax” of nearly $2,000 that is imposed on every man, woman and child in the United States each year.
Whether it’s called a lawsuit tax, tort tax or judgment tax, no one wants to have to pay it. The only thing good about having these taxes now begin to appear on actual bills is that it will make everyone aware that we are all paying for the lawsuit epidemic happening in our country. Awareness of the problem is the first step toward fixing it.
Have you heard the story about the guy who sued Winnebago claiming he should have been warned that setting the cruise control on his RV didn’t mean it was safe to leave the driver’s seat to fix a sandwich while the RV was cruising down the road?
Or how about the woman who was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler inside a furniture store?
Yes? You’ve seen the email describing these and five other lawsuits that are listed as the winners of this year’s “Stella Awards” for the most frivolous lawsuits in America? The email that starts by saying “These are real lawsuits but hard to believe?”
Well, don’t believe it.
Even though these “awards” were named after Stella Liebeck, the woman who sued McDonald’s after burning herself on that infamous spilled cup of coffee, Stella’s lawsuit is the only one described in that email note that is true.
If you’ve seen the Stella email and believed it, you’re not alone. I have received that note from unsuspecting friends hundreds of times. And now that I’m doing a lot of radio interviews around the country to talk about the most recent winners of our annual Wacky Warning Label Contest, I’m finding out that the “Stella Awards” are still being mentioned frequently by callers and hosts nine years after the email note was created.
While I’ve done my own research on this, the leading debunker of urban legends, Snopes.com, has also exposed this email as a fraud, and you can see their take on it here. After revealing that the “Stella Awards” are pure fiction, Snopes also takes the time to point out that there is no shortage of outrageous lawsuits in the courts that are real. Many of the real lawsuits they cite were brought to their attention by yours truly over the years.
One reason I want to take the time to set the record straight about the “Stella Awards” is that there’s no need for anyone to use stories about fictitious lawsuits to make the case that there’s a huge problem with lawsuit abuse in America. My blog and others are filled with examples of real loony lawsuits that have made real victims of innocent people. So don’t get burned by Stella.
Another reason I bring up the “Stella Awards” is because some people might think that since the hilarious lawsuits described in that email are bogus, the hilarious warning labels we talk about in our contest are also too funny to be true. Rest assured, we spend a lot of time verifying that the labels in our contest each year are real. You can see pictures of all of this year’s finalists here.
In the future, if someone sends you the Stella email note, send them a link to BobDorigoJones.com.
Once again, we see children losing a favorite activity because personal injury lawyers can’t resist the urge to sue a school.
