Like I really cared about what you thought about my posts....aww, it breaks my heart. I guess you are in favor of a more oppressive govt that meddles in every part of our lives, taxes us to death, and stifles our great economy from becoming even more great. I guess you support a legal system that has made life a living hell for most Americans and a cheap jackpot for others. No gun laws? Haven't you ever heard of the Brady Bill, ban on assault weapons, Washington DC and NYC's banning of all handguns? Apparently, you are not paying any attention, but I could tell that from your brain-dead response to my post. You are an enemy to liberty and....to top it all off...a bore. So good riddance.....rockbox. I won't miss any of your wise and all-knowing responses.
I was wondering, bamaslammer, do you know anyone personally who has "hit the jackpot" with our legal system? I not talking about something you read somewhere, I'm talking about someone you know personally who got a settlement they didn't deserve. Because I don't.
There are certain locales ( a few counties in Mississippi and Alabama) where people file their lawsuits where juries are extremely blinkered against corporations and big pockets and will award outrageous sums of money for little or no reason. Obviously, if those locales exist, apparently someone must be winning some big legal jackpots.
if I say, "the Valley" does that count as proof. it's a joke...and plaintiffs' lawyers will bend over backward to get their case down there.
that why the Texas11 filed down there? I understand that there maybe be areas that are more favorable to one side or the other.. but I still believe that most people are good, fair, and will do the right thing plus as has been pointed out many times here, getting an award from a jury and actually seeing the money are two different things..
absolutely...but most of the time, when attorneys are taking cases on contingency fees, they don't even take the case if there's not some substantially good chance at recovery. they do their homework before they invest years of work. honestly...forum shopping is a big deal. it's been cut down on a bit. but there have been all sorts of exposes on Texas in particular and "buying" justice by moving a case to a forum where plaintiffs simly can't lose. and when they win...they win BIG
http://www.cse.org/informed/issues_template.php?issue_id=657 http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/article/1752-6343.html http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/6391031.htm http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/articles/2003/08/31/business/bus94.txt Is that satisfactory? Because of these ridiculous jury awards, doctors are fleeing Mississippi like lemmings off a cliff. Does that do anyone good except make some lawyer rich and put the healthcare of the good people of Mississippi at risk?
I read your sources. What are the "ridiculous jury awards" of which you speak? Not a single article discussed any case. Not one detail given. Only statements by doctor/political activists. You have to look at the facts of each case. Was the doctor who got a $7 million dollar verdict against him guilty of doing something terribly negligent and harmful? Probably so. The sources didn't cite a single actual case, only the type of statements I described. Someone says the verdicts are too large, without anything to support that claim. If a doctor commits an error and a young man loses his ability to have an erection, what is that worth? What if he has to pee into a bag, too? High verdicts usually mean bad facts and a high degree of injury to the plaintiff. It's easy to dismiss the cases without any knowledge of how they got that way. I recovered 3 million in a lawsuit against a law firm. Lawyers, doctors, plumbers, electricians, accountants - you name it. They all screw up and badly injure or harm others. Doctors are no different than anyone else and should see that. They make more money than every other segment of society, and it's still not enough. While I don't bless the plaintiffs' bar, they are no worse than the doctors they sue, and probably better.
There is a particular county in Mississippi that is pretty notorious, I think it's Jefferson County but here are some of the awards being given. The problem in Mississippi is the extreme though and many prop 12 type supporters try to make it appear the norm. Big awards Mississippi juries have handed out numerous awards of $100 million or more since 1995. Most were later settled for much lower, undisclosed amounts, or reduced by a judge or on appeal. 1995: Loewen Group; Hinds County; breach of contract; $500 million. 1998: Ford Motor Co.; Holmes County; wrongful death; $145 million. 1999: American Home Products; Jefferson County; diet drug fen-phen; $150 million. 1999: American General Financial Center; Jones County; credit fraud; $167.5 million. 2000: AMS Inc.; Hinds County; breach of contract; $474.5 million. 2000: General Motors Co.; Smith County; wrongful death; $250 million. 2001: AC&S, Dresser Industries and 3M Corp.; Holmes County; asbestos exposure; $150 million. 2001: Johnson & Johnson; Claiborne County; heartburn drug Propulsid; $100 million. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nice work, I guess that shows some people on the board that these punitive awards are not a product of my imagination. Damn, how much do you think the lawyers got off those cases, fifty percent? Cripes, I'm in the wrong business.
Nice recovery... first a statement that all the media agreed Bush had won, then a response that Bush won under a certain method of recounting. Fact is, the way you do the recount affects the race in a number of ways, but going with the most inclusive method leads to a Gore victory in Florida. (I used to think being inclusive in our voting process was something all americans agreed on.) By the way, the reason most folks think Bush won Florida is because when thye findings came out, the White House PR apparatchiks played the story of Gore losing on his standard to the hilt, ignoring the other conclusions. From the Orlando Sentinel... _______________ Exposing the Flaws -- The Final Report Al Gore might be in the White House today if Florida election officials had heeded his mantra of "count every vote" during last year's painfully drawn-out presidential election. But the rushed and limited recount strategies his own lawyers pushed may have cost him the presidency. And the statewide hand count interrupted Dec. 9, 2000, by the U.S. Supreme Court would not have gone Gore's way, either. Ironically, George W. Bush might have added almost 1,200 votes to his final winning margin had his legal team embraced the "dimpled chads" they spent so much time deriding. These are among the findings of the most comprehensive study ever done of the 175,000 Florida ballots that for 36 days were the subject of intense and bitter debate from small-town courthouses to the U.S. Supreme Court. A consortium of major newspapers, including the Orlando Sentinel, paid an independent research group to meticulously compile a database of every uncounted Florida ballot that could be located. Nine scenarios were used in the Florida ballot study. Below is a quick breakdown of the results, followed by Orlando Sentinel coverage of the recount project. Prevailing statewide standard--Gore Supreme Court 'simple' scenario--Bush Supreme Court 'complex' scenario--Bush 67-county custom standards scenario--Gore 2-corners-detached statewide scenario--Gore 'Most inclusive' statewide scenario--Gore 'Most restrictive' statewide scenario--Bush Gore 4-county recount strategy scenario--Bush 'Dimples when other dimples present' scenario--Gore
I site hard numbers, you give me your feeling and I am grasping at straws?! What's the weather like on your planet? Gore WON the popular vote. PERIOD. End of Story. To quote my good pal, T_J, CASE CLOSED. Bush fans love to state that Bush for sure won the electoral college votes, yet proof of that is sketchy at best. But at the same time say that Gore only won the popular vote because of the evil liberal media. Gimme a break. I don't think I can roll my eyes further back into my head...
I think most of you around here know my answer to this question. ---------------------------------------------------------- Let George Undo It Bush's Big Tent Has Some Tears—Even on the Right Side by James Ridgeway September 17, 2003 As of this week, at least, the Bush campaign is running on the success of the "war against terror"—in Iraq and Afghanistan and at home. This is an attempt to deflect attention from what's happening with George W. Bush's main base of support: corporate execs rewarding his policies on taxes, the environment, and other business issues with more and more campaign cash. Whether the Democrats will be able to build a cohesive base (both parties have had to deal with dangerously shifting coalitions) to take advantage of Bush's pandering toward the business class is another question. But it's not impossible. As of June, Bush had raised $35 million, with current estimates of the size of his war chest, according to The Washington Post, standing at $55 million. Helen Thomas, the veteran White House correspondent, speculated back in June that Bush wanted to raise $200 million, which would be a record. In 2000 Bush raised $191 million, compared with Gore's $133 million. Despite all that money, at least some political professionals think Bush can be beaten. "The mathematics is becoming more and more plausible every day," Geoff Garin, of Peter Hart Research Associates, told the Voice. A Gallup poll last week showed Bush's approval down to 52 percent. Pollsters found Bush leading a Democrat (not a particular one) by only four points, 47-43. "Bush still enjoys an advantage as commander in chief," said Garin, "but the value of that advantage has declined substantially over the past few weeks as people come to see Iraq as less compelling a success. And because the national-security situation has diminished, Bush's economic vulnerabilities weigh more heavily in the balance." A new Hart poll shows that by an 11-point margin people say they are more dissatisfied than satisfied with the direction of the country. "The votes are there," said Garin, "and the ingredients in terms of public opinion and public attitudes are there. And the electoral votes are there: It only takes a switch of one state." Past Tents and Present Tents Right-wing alliances, often important to the GOP during presidential campaigns, would appear to be shifting. For the Bush camp, by far the most unsettling situation is the California recall election—whenever it eventually takes place. A win by Arnold Schwarzenegger would not necessarily be a win for the Republican right. The Terminator is a more or less liberal Republican—pro-gay, pro-choice, sympathetic to environmentalists. He has said the Clinton impeachment made him ashamed to be a Republican. The Bush administration is gangbusters on cutting taxes, but Schwarzenegger is noncommittal on this key GOP strategy. As an immigrant, he is scarcely opposed to immigration per se, as are many on the right who call either for a moratorium or severe racial profiling. In sum, at least on paper, Arnold represents everything the GOP right detests. And yet, many of the right-wing leaders—the same ones blathering on and on since Reagan about sticking to their "principles"—have lined up behind him. Pat Robertson is embracing Schwarzenegger—who did drugs and participated in orgies in the '70s—as his kind of guy. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly all have fallen for Arnold. That may be fine for the California recall, but having a moderate Republican stir the blood is not necessarily good for the GOP right-wingers' big vote next year. Especially with another potential tear in the fabric of the GOP's big tent—this one involving young males. In California, as The New York Times pointed out Sunday, polls are showing that young white men—a traditional base for the conservative Republican Party since Nixon—voted in greater numbers in 2000 than women and seem to be ready to embrace the Terminator's moderate politics. This can only strain the fabric of the GOP's tent, under which Bush the Younger has so skillfully accommodated the Christian right, libertarian economics, free trade, and traditional conservative Main Street greed. By embracing the right, Bush sought to rectify the mistakes of his father, who went down to defeat when he ignored it. Still, can the president who trashed the environment and condemned gay marriage do an about-face and embrace a dope-smoking orgy-goer who hasn't gone born-again? More Trouble on the Right And forget California for a minute. Conservatives of all stripes are screeching at the out-of-control deficit and the skyrocketing costs of Iraq. Others—from David Keene of the American Conservative Union to Paul Weyrich, a founder of the New Right decades ago, and Lori Waters, D.C. director of Phyllis Schlafly's anti-abortion, anti-feminist Eagle Forum, are lined up against Bush to fight the Patriot Act. Grover Norquist, a plugged-in Republican wheeler-dealer who represents or has represented Microsoft and the NRA, is also opposing Bush on the Patriot Act. These conservatives, led by former Georgia congressman and Clinton inquisitor Bob Barr, have formed a coalition with the ACLU to save their constitutional rights. Of course, these people are not so much worried about Ashcroft as they are about what might happen to them should Hillary Clinton become president. Bush's stronghold is the pro-military South, where his campaign stop at Fort Steward, Georgia, was greeted last week with a thunderous welcome from the Third Infantry. Little did the troops realize that the photo of rank upon file of soldiers saluting the commander in chief was a priceless campaign shot, right up there with Bush's carefully staged carrier landing. For now, Bush's campaign works splendidly in the South, which also has big numbers of right-wing Christians and young white men. The one exception is Florida, whose support, despite the presence of brother Jeb, Bush can't take for granted. "As of right now, even the state's strongest Democrat could not beat Bush in Florida," Brad Coker of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research told the Voice last week. Bush is certainly not vulnerable in Florida on military matters, but the economy could be a problem there. "If you're going to get Bush in the South," he said, "it's going to have to be an economic issue, much like Clinton in 1996." But the Democrats may have gotten a break last weekend, when Florida congressman Mark Foley, the GOP front-runner for the Senate (and a moderate compared with other GOP right-wingers), abruptly pulled out. That leaves it open for Bob Graham to quit his no-go presidential campaign and come back to win Florida for the Dems. Graham, as no other lawmaker, can run against Bush's war policies because of his chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He has opposed the Iraq war and has yet to tell about the intelligence snafus. At the same time, Graham has a record as a conservative Democrat, being the single most important politician in the nation in bringing back the death penalty. It was during his governorship that Florida resurrected executions. When it comes to killing people, Graham makes Bush look like Gandhi. As for the rest of the South, Coker said, the Dems could have a chance in states Clinton carried in both of his elections, and which just might become swing states: Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Of Tennessee, Coker noted, "Gore couldn't carry it—and it's his home state. . . . My opinion is that Gore lost the election in Tennessee instead of Florida." In any case, said Coker, "for the Democrats to be competitive in the South, they'll probably need two things: They'll need the economic recovery to sputter, and they'll need a Southerner on the ticket." Of the candidates now officially in the race, that would mean Graham or North Carolina's John Edwards, and neither campaign has moved an inch to date. Coker didn't put much stock in the chances of probable candidate Wesley Clark. Weapons of Self-Destruction Bush's best chance for re-election probably has less to do with big-tent Republicanism than it does with the dwarf toss under way in the Democratic Party. Dean's ahead in the key states of Iowa and New Hampshire, which means someone will be dispatched to take him down ASAP. As in 1988, when Gore was dispatched to New York to waste Jesse Jackson (pictured then, as Dean is today, as a demagogic populist), the job falls to the tired nags in the stables of the Democratic Leadership Council. The idea is pretty simple: Joe Lieberman takes down Dean, thereby opening space for John Edwards to march in. Edwards is and has always been the DLC's sleeper candidate, the man who can save the nation from the mad lefty freaks in the Northeast. http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0338/mondo1.php
