Philadelphia Personal Injury Attorney Blog | Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis LLP

The Detroit News has published another attempt at promoting tort reform by companies that stand to profit. This most recent distortion of the facts was co-written by John Engler, President and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, and represents a gussied-up form of "what's good for General Motors . . ." In this opinion piece, not only do Engler and his co-author promote the kind of statistics I objected to in a previous blog, call the state of Pennsylvania a "tort liability sinner," but they also promote a finding by "University of California-Berkeley economist Lisa Kimmel," which states that tort reform leads to a 1 percent increase in job creation.

I put the description of Dr. Kimmel in quotation marks because it is very misleading. The purported findings come from her 2001 dissertation, written while she was a student at the University of California-Berkeley, so it is not technically accurate to describe her as an "economist" at the school.

In addition, if you look at the summary she wrote of her dissertation's findings, you see a somewhat different story from what the industrialists would have you believe. Although she talks about the growth of jobs, she states, "I conclude my research by noting that jobs do not tell the wholestory [sic]. If tort reform has increased jobs by reducing the costs generated by frivolous lawsuits, then reform is on balance positive. However, if instead tort reform has reduced the costs of doing business by allowing firms to externalize social costs, then additional jobs will be paid for with higher accident rates and greater health hazards." She notes that in some cases job growth comes at the price of allowing firms to "externalize social costs," meaning that you are likely to pay for the jobs in another way, not only in money, but in the flesh and blood of workers and consumers hurt by unsafe workplace practices and defective products.

If we look at a Congressional Budget Office report from 2004, it notes that tort reform, specifically noneconomic damage caps, "led to increases in insurers' profitability for both medical malpractice and general liability insurance. (Evidence on whether premiums were affected was mixed.)"

Looking at the evidence, tort reforms may provide some increase in jobs, but they will definitely lead to higher profits for manufacturers and insurance companies and less recourse for you in the event of an injury.

If you have suffered a workplace injury, or an injury as a result of medical malpractice or a defective product, you know how vulnerable you are to the negligence of corporations. There is no reason to let them feed their greed on your misfortune. Please contact the personal injury lawyers at Pomerantz, Perlberger, and Lewis, LLP today for a free initial consultation and case evalutation.