Is the first statement really true? I'd say it remains to be seen.Originally Posted by Richard Bey
For my part, I have no desire to cap the income of trial lawyers *or* CEOs.
Is the first statement really true? I'd say it remains to be seen.
For my part, I have no desire to cap the income of trial lawyers *or* CEOs.
At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous....
-- Lord Acton
Im being a little provocative here...
But since P.I. lawyers work on percentage of award, capping claims would cap their salaries.
True. I'm with you on this one.
At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous....
-- Lord Acton
Well, then I will just have to argue with myself!! lol
PI lawyers DO have the option of taking a case based upon billable hours...of course, here again they would make far less than a contingency fee on a high judgment (but more than a fee where judgment is denied).
Although I'm not really one for tort reform...
But when you've got a trainwreck like L.Lohan suing the E*Trade babies for $100,000,000 for "improperly invoking her "likeness, name, characterization, and personality" without permission, violating her right of privacy." then yeah. Maybe we have reached a tipping point!
At the very least she should have to pay for everyone's legal fees & court costs once the first judge who sees this case gets a chance to hit her over the head with it.
The milkoholic baby's name was 'Lindsay' so 23 year old Lohan's likeness, personality and characterization were appropriated improperly?? WTF
With logic like that, maybe S.Palin should also try to cash in on this victimhood gravy train, and file a lawsuit against FamilyGuy.
-Instead of repeatedly gnashing and wailing about how the depiction of a self-assured, highly functioning, attractive to 'normal' people, female Down syndrome teen-ager was demeaning, disparaging and hurtful; since the female, teenaged character (played by a real actress with Down's) also obviously and improperly appropriated the "likeness", "name" and "personality" of her one-year-old family values photo-op appendage.
Then again. Maybe she has a case?
'Careful. We don't want to learn from this' -Calvin and Hobbes
I don't think the point is to cap the lawyers income, the point is to reduce frivilous suits and the overall cost of litigation in an attempt to reduce doctor's insurance costs.
But, since you mentioned CEO's, let's also apply it to doctors, lawyers, athletes, entertainers, news anchors, radio hosts, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, George Soros, Al Gore and well…what the heck ….let’s just cap everybody’s income and be done with it!
In fact let’s go all the way. Let’s really redistribute wealth. Let’s cap assets too. Every body throws all their assets, every last penny, into a pot and then we’ll redistribute it equally. Then cap everybody’s income at the “average” and anything above that goes to the government. That sounds fair to me!
I don’t know why so many are so quick to blame CEO’s for their problems. If they commit a crime prosecute them. Otherwise what’s the beef? They make more money than us? Are we jealous?
CEO’s and other management are selected (elected) by the owners of the companies they work for. Just like in our political system they can be removed by those who they represent.
If we stop bailing out the bad ones, they will fail and will be removed by their own shareholders. Problem solved.
Last edited by Paul; 03-27-2010 at 03:53 PM.
That's only the tip of the iceberg.
There are two major parts to the problem. The first is, and this is partially due to the rationale behind artificially limiting the number of doctors in the United States, that we expect perfection from our doctors. If a doctor makes a completely reasonable, but, in hindsight, wrong decision, then not only can he or she be sued for malpractice, much of the time the doctor will lose the case. A redefinition of malpractice to limit it to true negligence needs to be made.
The second, and most major part, is a side effect of what you and I mentioned; the amount of money lost in illegitimate (as opposed to frivolous) lawsuits is piddling compared to the amount of money spent AVOIDING those lawsuits. For every dollar lost in cases, a hundred is spent on unnecessary and often expensive procedures, given for that one in 100,000 chance that they will pan out. THERE is where tort reform will result in a real reduction in medical expenses.
A related problem is an even more difficult one to solve. There is pretty much no such thing as a procedure, piece of equipment, or medicine which is 100% safe for everybody. Looking at a macro view, losing 1 life to save 100,000 seems like a pretty good deal, especially if the one who dies would likely have been one of the 100,000. However, it does not seem like such a good deal to the one who dies, or their family. This is a good chunk of what makes many treatments so expensive; they have to amortize in the cost of compensating those who are damaged by the treatments.
Truthfully, I can't think of a good way of handling that problem. All I can say is that it is a problem that MUST be addressed.
Bart Lidofsky
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