America in 2020 if the "Tort Reform Crowd" Has Their Way

Future America: Year 2020:

Somewhere in America, a driver starts his car; he steps on the gas and takes off. A routine beginning though, soon becomes anything but routine. The vehicle keeps accelerating; even through the driver takes his foot off the accelerator and he is powerless to stop it. He tries to brake, but the brakes won’t work. Finally, he drives off the road, strikes a tree, and suffers catastrophic injuries. Several million similar vehicles have experienced the same problem, but they have not been repaired or recalled. Hundreds of people have been injured and/or killed by these dangerous vehicles.

Elsewhere, a mother places her exhausted infant into her crib. As the child drifts off to sleep, her tiny hand reaches out of the grating and trips a mechanism that causes the side to come crashing down. The baby’s hand and arm are broken; the mother discovers that several infants have been seriously injured, some killed, in similar incidents, but nothing is being done about these dangerously defective cribs. Nothing is being done to protect the most innocent members of our society.

At bedtime, somewhere else in America, a man takes his pain medication. He has been taking it for years. Slowly, but surely, it has been destroying his heart valve. He goes to sleep and never wakes up. This drug is known to be dangerously defective; it has killed and/or disabled thousands, but it remains on the market because it is very effective in relieving pain and the public is purchasing it in significant numbers. The manufacturer is grossing billions.

In a hospital, somewhere in America, an exhausted doctor performs his last of multiple surgeries, this day. His task is to amputate the cancerous arm of his patient. Because of a hospital error and because the doctor is too tired to notice, he amputates the wrong arm. The patient must now chose between treating the cancer with chemotherapy or radiation, with less than a 50% chance of living, or having the other arm amputated and living the rest of his life with no arms.

In 2018, the insurance company lobby and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce completed their campaign against what they referred to as “Lawsuit Abuse”. Their major opposition in their battle for immunity from lawsuits and accountability has been the trial lawyers and their various pro-justice associations. The trial lawyers stood up for justice, stood up for safety, stood up for injury prevention, and stood up for holding those companies that would injure, disable or kill our citizens accountable for their actions in a court of law. The trial lawyers and other pro-justice, pro-safety organizations knew that corporate financial accountability in court is the single greatest safety tool in our society. At long last, however, pro-business, pro-insurance forces succeeded in demonizing the trial lawyers and other pro-citizen, pro-safety, pro-prevention forces. Somehow, they successfully duped our citizens and lobbied Congress to pass the most comprehensive tort reform legislation in history. Hospitals and doctors now receive complete immunity from lawsuits; product manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies also now enjoy complete immunity from suit.

Companies from all over the world are now shipping their most dangerous and defective products to America; after all, the laws in their countries require them to produce safe products or they will face litigation, prosecution and/or government shutdown. However, if they import these products out of the country and into a country that has no such restrictions, they can make these dangerous and defective products with impunity.

American and foreign industry are prospering as dangerous and defective products of all kinds are being made in or shipped to the United States. The growth of medical and rehabilitation clinics has been enormous; treatment for all of those maimed or disabled in one way or another has created a significant need for these clinics, all over the country. These clinics are enormously profitable because, immune from liability, clinic managers can hire substandard labor, while insurance costs are greatly reduced. The world ecomomy is growing by leaps and bounds. Of course, population has receded in the United States; for the first time in recent history, as the number of deaths have greatly exceeded the number of births. Big business and the U.S. Chamber, of course, consider this loss of life a small price to pay for our vibrant, robust economy.

No efforts are made to recall unsafe automobiles, cribs or drugs. No efforts are made to prevent or reduce the influx of dangerous products and drugs flowing into the U.S.. There is, simply, no incentive to do so. In a joint statement, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and insurance industry spokespersons said “the public will just have to be more careful, now, won’t they?”

O.K., back to 2010. Post tort reform 2020 looks quite scary, doesn’t it? Lawsuit Financial, the pro-justice lawsuit funding company, asks all citizens reading this: Do you want to live in this America of 2020? Well, if our citizens buy into the U.S. Chamber led nonsense called “lawsuit abuse” or "tort reform", this could be your country of the future. Are you willing to sacrifice the lives and safety of our people on the alter of corporate and medical industry profits? The U.S. Chamber’s clear response is “yes”. What do you say?