I would bet that few people have any idea how much our damaged legal system costs them as ordinary citizens. I asked the Morey brothers if they knew how much. Randy Morey, NSB class of 1965, responded, “I'll guess that they are costing the average family about $5,000 a year. Carl Morey, NSB class of 1954, said he wouldn’t be surprised if it were closer to $10,000 per year. The older sibling was close. In an article published in the Wall Street Journal, it was estimated that the average American family pays $9,800 annually because of legal costs.
Naturally no one in Southeast Volusia receives a yearly bill for $9,800.
What happens is that the price of everything we buy here and in communities across the country is increased by the added cost of covering for legal liability.
One of the areas it has hit us the hardest is in the medical costs.
Readers may be surprised to know that babies are no longer delivered locally at Bert Fish Hospital because of medical malpractice costs.
The last doctor who delivered babies at Bert Fish told the hospital management and board that if he did not get another doctor to help him he would have to give it up because of exhaustion.
They almost had Dr. Sam Mehring talked into returning to the practice of delivering babies until he attended a medical seminar that included financial issues.
He was told at the symposium that OBGYNs had been sued successfully for their personal wealth as well as the insurance coverage.
The rest is history. Dr. Mehring did not go back into delivery of babies and Dr. Jacob D. Rouse quit delivering babies.
So if you or your children or grandchildren have to go to Daytona, Orlando or some other out of town place to have a baby delivered you can thank the lawyers and malpractice issues.
To show how ridiculous things have gotten a woman was once awarded approximately two million in damages because a hospital MRI had caused her to lose her ESP powers.
The “happy ending” to the story is that a judge overturned the award because he asserted that if the woman really had the power of ESP she would have foreseen the problem and not had the MRI.
State Farm has had to reconsider where it sells home owners insurance. Since they were forced to cover flood damage when flood damage wasn’t covered in the original contract they have had to take a close look at where insured homes are located. Meanwhile your home insurance has gone up.
We have all had to pay for the asbestos lawsuits in which it is estimated that about 80 percent of the people collecting damages have no injuries while those with real injuries from asbestos exposure have collected very little.
Several steps come to mind to reduce this abuse of the legal system. One direct measure is to make the loser of a lawsuit pay all the expenses for both sides. Known as “loser pays all” this system is used everywhere in the world except the United States .
The virtue of this system is that it stops most frivolous lawsuits that are being filed because the person suing knows that a settlement is cheaper for the plaintiff than a win in court because of the court cost.
The second measure that comes to mind is making liability proportional to blame.
If a person with a lot of money is found guilty of 1 percent blame in an accident he or she can’t be held responsible for more than 1 percent of the costs incurred in the accident.
As things are now, he or she may pay 100 percent of the costs, which is simply wrong.
The third action that was unanimously recommended by the blue ribbon committee set up by Gov. Jeb Bush and chaired by University of Central Florida President John C. Hitt is that the non monetary awards in malpractice lawsuits be capped.
Non-monetary awards include such things as pain and suffering and things that can’t really be measured.
These reforms will be difficult to achieve because lawyers have spent a lot of money on politicians to prevent them from happening.