droopy, wagoner (3/18/2009 8:20:08 AM)

Best idea I have ever heard from you, dog. Your donkey needs reform badly.

I am shocked that lawyers are against tort reform, who would have ever thought.

Angry Citizen!, Bluejacket (3/18/2009 8:50:32 AM)

Soooo, you file a complaint against a huge corporation who has lawyers on the payroll, and your attorney can only be paid so much? Yeah, this reform is really fair isn't it~!

justiceawaits, Claremore (3/18/2009 9:04:46 AM)

Lawyer lotto, Lawyers filing frivolous lawsuits and driving up my insurance premiums. Hell Yes, we need reform. Lawyers should be limited to 33 percent or less of any award. They are suppossed to be suing on behalf of the client and getting a percentage, not keeping most of the money.
Let`s sue the tobacco companies and give everybody health insurance. Yeah right. The tobacco companies pass the cost on the the consumers and I still don`t have my health insurance. The lawyers all got their millions of dollars in leagal fes though.

Graychin, Eucha (3/18/2009 9:27:54 AM)

Mischief is always dressed up as "reform."

There isn't a problem with frivolous lawsuits in Oklahoma. This is just a way to keep plaintiffs out of court, stacking the deck in favor of big business. And look who is carrying their water.

HH66, La La Land (3/18/2009 9:31:10 AM)

My attorney can beat up your attorney. Na-nan na nannah!!!

hardball, (3/18/2009 4:20:30 PM)

Don't cap what the victim gets. CAP what the lawyer screws the victim out of. Instead of 45-60% they should only get 15%.

ajohnb, Jenks (3/18/2009 9:05:45 PM)

Whowouldvethunk?

Amy K, (3/19/2009 2:02:25 PM)

Interesting that the Bar Association has taken an active position against legal reform... All lawyers in the state of Oklahoma are required to pay dues to the Oklahoma Bar Association whether they agree with the lobbying they have begun to do or not. And there are lawyers on both sides of the debate...

Grumpy, Okmulgee (3/20/2009 3:40:55 AM)

Amy, what you have to look for is the clientele of the lawyers on each side of the "tort reform" debate. The only ones getting outside money to fund their lobbying are the lawyers working for the big corporations who don't give a "expletive deleted" who they step on or kill in their quest for profits or the lawyers on the payroll of the insurance companies looking to cover their bad investment losses.

The problem is that the attorneys invest months to win the infrequent multi-million dollar judgment is the one who gains the headlines, not the lawyer who gets paid a hundred thousand dollars per each for a few hours work filing foreclosures on farmers and businesses.

gopokes83, (4/30/2009 1:48:47 PM)

Caps on contingency fees - I could go either way on this, but I also think most people don't realize how long lawyers work on these cases. If there's a contingency fee, the lawyer is taking a risk that his months and months of effort might leave him empty-handed. The high percentage of the award he receives is what makes that risk worthwhile and acts an incentive for him to do his best work possible.

"Tort reform," though, is not a good idea. Look at the parties who support it - do you really think corporations are just full of upstanding individuals who merely want to pass the savings onto you? No, not having tort reform would pad THEIR pockets, not yours. The best argument against tort reform is consumer safety. What do you think the pharmaceutical companies would care if they knew a drug would make them billions and billions of dollars but kill a hundred infants? Simple - they'd let the babies die, because they'd be out 30 million for the claims but raking in billions of dollars on the product. Do you think car companies would go above and beyond governmental regulations if they knew there'd be no financial ramifications of their not doing so? Of course not! We, the consumers, would always be the losing party. I value my safety and that of my loved ones, thank you, and understand very well that the fear of litigation drives a great deal of safety measures. The relatively low financial cost of litigation (less than one half percent of health-care spending, for example, goes to legal fees) is worth keeping everyone as safe as possible.

Additionally, while the idea that having tort reform would affect your health-care costs is dubious at best (see above statistic), why does everyone blame plaintiffs and lawyers, but not wealthy, corrupt corporations or insurance companies? Corporations are infamous for using their wealth to screw over the plaintiff with a valid claim who can't afford an extended lawsuit - unnecessary trial delays (when the plaintiff can't work, can't pay his bills), and frivolously appealing decisions come to mind. So, when the defense knows there's a legitimate claim and the plaintiff truly deserves relief, they use the money you're paying for their services to basically exhaust someone else's resources when they could've just settled and got it out of the way. Why don't you get up in arms about that?

Everybody blames the plaintiff until they're the guy who got screwed over or they're the one who had a loved one harmed. Same goes for the lawyers who, one day, are scum, and then, amazingly, they're not too bad of people when they do something for YOU.