• Truth Suffers as Tort Dodgers Seek Legislation by Anecdote
• Deceptions Mirror National Tort Groups'

Three Strikes
Recently, Rep. Harold Dutton, Jr., D-Houston, called Weekley's Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR) and the Texas Association of Business and Chambers of Commerce (TABCC) onto the carpet for repeatedly distorting the facts of cases that they cited to muster support for a bill that would limit so-called "third-party" legal liability.

Dutton began investigating the business groups' loose facts after they mischaracterized a case in which Dutton served as the plaintiff's attorney.  Dutton says that three times in succession the Chamber submitted information to him in support of its lawsuit-abuse claims and three times the information supplied skewed the facts.

At issue was a TABCC direct mail piece claiming that small business owners are responsible for crimes committed on their property if the perpetrator goes unapprehended.  When asked by Dutton for documentation of a lawsuit described in the mailer, TABCC responded with examples, which did not involve unapprehended criminals or fit the facts described by the tort-deform advocates.  In fact, in one of the cases referred to as an example of  "devastating settlements against Texas business," the business owner did not have to pay money to anyone.

Tort zealots have been coupling scare tactics with fictionalized facts for years.

Sugar Coated
In its 1995 push for federal tort protections, the national Chamber of Commence ran ads depicting the Girl Scouts as  "victims of lawsuit abuse," going so far as to calculate how many cookies they must sell to cover their liability insurance. The only problem was the victims did not feel victimized. "It's not  true at all that we have been barraged with frivolous lawsuits," Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. spokesperson Bonnie McEwan complained of  the deceptive ad campaign.

In the most infamous tort anecdote, the American Tort Reform Association publicized only splattered facts from a lawsuit filed by an 81 year-old woman who was severely burned by McDonald’s coffee in 1992. Among the facts that they found too inconvenient too mention:

• The victim suffered third-degree burns over 6 percent of  her body;
• she required surgical skin grafts and eight days of hospitalization;
• the victim was a passenger in a stopped car, not a moving driver;
• McDonalds kept its coffee at scalding temperatures far above the industry average, a practice that repeatedly burned customers and triggered 700 documented complaints; and
• the company rejected an initial settlement offer of $20,000, the judge reduced a $2.9 million jury award by more than 75 percent, and the parties eventu-ally settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Numerically Challenged Accountants
Back in Texas, the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants were caught with their calculators down when testifying for special liability protection for themselves before the House State Affairs Committee in 1997.

Grilled by committee members, trade group representatives could not cite a single case of lawsuit abuse against their profession in Texas, much less quantify the extent of the alleged problem.

Even as TLR chief Dick Weekley and the corporate front group Citizens for a Sound Economy clamor for relief from the hidden "tort tax," the actual cost of the U.S. liability system is small and getting smaller.  According to Ernst and Young and the Risk & Insurance Management Society of New York, total liability costs for U.S. companies in 1997 were $5.25 per $1,000 of revenue, an amount that has fallen 37 percent over the last five years.
 
 
 
 

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