News and Developments in Personal Injury and the Obstruction of Justice

June 14, 2007
Editorial - Bork v. Bork
NY Times

There are many versions of the cliché that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged,” and Robert Bork has just given rise to another. A tort plaintiff, it turns out, is a critic of tort lawsuits who has slipped and fallen at the Yale Club.

Mr. Bork, of course, is the former federal appeals court judge who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987 but not confirmed by the Senate. He has long been famous for his lack of sympathy for people who go to court with claims of race or sex discrimination, or other injustices. He has gotten particularly exercised about accident victims driving up the cost of business by filing lawsuits. In an op-ed article, he once complained that “juries dispense lottery-like windfalls,” and compared the civil justice system to “Barbary pirates.”

That was before Mr. Bork spoke at the Yale Club last year, and fell on his way to the dais, injuring his leg and bumping his head. Mr. Bork is not merely suing the club for failing to provide a set of stairs and a handrail between the floor and the dais. He has filed a suit that is so aggressive about the law that, if he had not filed it himself, we suspect he might regard it as, well, piratical.

Mr. Bork puts the actual damages for his apparently non-life-threatening injuries (after his fall, he was reportedly able to go on and deliver his speech) at “in excess of $1,000,000.” He is also claiming punitive damages. And he is demanding that the Yale Club pay his attorney’s fees.

We can imagine what Mr. Bork the legal scholar would ask if he had a chance to question Mr. Bork the plaintiff. If it was “reasonably foreseeable” that without stairs and a handrail, “a guest such as Mr. Bork” would be injured, why did Mr. Bork try to climb up to the dais? Where does personal responsibility enter in? And wouldn’t $1 million-plus punitive damages amount to a “lottery-like windfall”?

Since we believe in the tort system, when properly used, all we would ask is whether Mr. Bork’s unfortunate experience at the Yale Club has led him to re-evaluate any of the harsh things he has said in the past about injured people, much like himself, who simply wanted their day in court.

My Turn: I Trust Juries—and Americans Like You
By Linda McDougal; Newsweek
December 22 - Like most people, I never expected to be involved in a lawsuit. But then, in May 2002, two doctors switched the pathology slides of my breast biopsy with another woman's. Following my double mastectomy, the surgeon told me I didn't have cancer. Click here to read.

F.D.A. Releases Memo on Vioxx
According to the FDA and news sources, Vioxx (by Merck) is linked to heart attacks and Death. Providing details from a report it had described broadly in August, the Food and Drug Administration published a memorandum yesterday that indicated Merck's Vioxx painkiller might have contributed to 27,785 heart attacks and deaths from 1999 through 2003.

The memo, based on a sample of patient records, concluded that people taking Vioxx were more likely to have heart attacks or die from sudden cardiac arrest than people taking a competing painkiller, Celebrex from Pfizer. The report was part of a study that an F.D.A. researcher, Dr. David J. Graham, conducted with Kaiser Permanente. The general results of the study were reported in August.

The memo by Dr. Graham, an associate director in the F.D.A.'s office of drug safety, was dated Sept. 30, the same day that Merck announced it was pulling Vioxx from the market. Merck attributed the move to its own study indicating that patients who took Vioxx for 18 months or longer were more likely to have a stroke or heart attack than patients taking a placebo.

A Merck spokeswoman, Janet Skidmore, said yesterday that the company had not yet seen the F.D.A. study and had no immediate comment.

Statistics Don't Support Bush's Claim That Tort Reform Will Minimize Costs
Arguing that his economic policies consist of more than tax cuts geared to the wealthy, President Bush maintained last week in his year-end press conference that tort reform is a key part of his "pro-growth" agenda, saying that it, "would have made a difference" to benefit the economy. A recent study by the National Center for State Courts found that medical malpractice lawsuits per capita actually decreased in the most recent ten-year period examined. Click here to read.

The Doctor Is Out
Time Magazine's June 2, 2003, cover story, "The Doctor is Out," contains breaking news confirming what consumer advocates have been saying for years: caps on malpractice damage awards will not result in lower malpractice insurance premiums. Click here to read.

Blaming the Victims
Why are liability insurance rates soaring again? It's the courts, stupid. Runaway juries award lottery-sized winnings for groundless claims filed by money-mad lawyers. Facing grievous losses, battered insurers have no choice but to raise premiums.

At least, that's what we're told... Click here to read.