Nothing. That's the point. He wants to bash all lawyers, but has little of substance to offer that could not be found in the political ads paid for by the insurance lobby. Putting in an artificial cap that bears no relation to the level of economic (or actual) damages is short sighted, unless you have something to gain by having it that way. Shockingly enough, insurance companies do and they paid the freight for a lot of the political ads that people like T_J bought hook, line and sinker. So those in camp took a system that seemed unfair to some people and made it unfair to all people (unless you have tens of thousands for corporate lawyers). Anybody who thinks this was a good idea must sound like a can of Krylon when they shake their head.
hey, genuis...what economic damages do you have for people in a nursing home? enlighten me. there is no loss of future income for people in a nursing home. the damages are all non-economic. there are no economic damages AT ALL...for this. this isn't about how much money the victim's family gets...this is about speaking to corporations in the only language they understand..dollars. .
Before I address anything else, I think it is worth repeating that MadMax and Refman simply did not know the law when they thought that $250,000 was the cap. The cap is $500,000. If they did know that this was the cap, then they were purposefully trying to mislead. Either way, it is clear that their quest to protect other lawyers is something that blinds them to the point of error in this debate. Second, to give you an example of just how much lawyers have ruined our healthcare system, I ask that you look no further than MadMax and Refman's implications that $250,000 is not a lot of money. Think about this for a moment. The centerpiece of their argument is that people can *only* receive $250,000. I don't how you think about it, but this is a lot of money (obviously this isn't the cap, but I'm using the number for illustrative purposes). In this day of frivolous lawsuits and outrageous settlements/rewards, if someone receives $250,000 for pain and suffering, then they feel shortchanged! How far we have come! Jim Adler and runaway juries have made lottery-style awards what is to be expected! In the lawyers world, anything short of a million bucks is a loss! Guess who pays for this? Yup. You and I. Another piece of evidence that the system is broken and needs fixing. Third, look how defensive these lawyers are! Clearly they are arguing from a position of weakness. Not only are they unaware of the actual law, but the vote went against them last fall. They know that they support the minority viewpoint in this debate. This frustrates them! When questioned, they turn to personal insults and go off on unrelated tangents (refman). They only cite the most slanted, extreme examples in their 'rebuttals'. I have maintained all along that lawyers are not unbiased sources of information in this debate, and this thread has proven that to be true. The bottom line is that this new bill helps our healthcare system dramatically. Doctors were being scared away from practicing medicine in Texas, and they were being scared away from taking on 'high-risk' specialties -- specialties that are very much needed by our population. Lawyers did this to them. Lawyers created this litigation-lottery mindset and we as healthcare consumers must deal with the fallout. This bill helps to level that playing field, by reigning in the out-of-control trial lawyers.
TJ - this is so ridiculous. i am NOT a plaintiff's attorney. i do NOT take contingency fee cases like this where i make a field day on the big exemplary damage awards. refman is a bankruptcy attorney...he has no personal pecuniary interest in this at all. neither do the attorneys from both sides of the bar that are speaking up big time about this. they're not speaking up out of ignorance, like yourself..but from real experience. hell, the argument i'm making here adversely affects 90% of my clients! the cap against a single institution is $250K, as i understand it. thus, my hypothetical stands. you're being more legalistic here in this argument than the lawyers are. i've never said $250K is not a lot money. what i said was it's not an adequate deterrant to healthcare institutions or ANY MAJOR OTHER CORPORATE DEFENDANT (because this isn't just about healthcare)...it takes real money to make companies make real changes. I've seen that truism played out time and time again. you miss the boat entirely when you keep coming back to arguing about doctors...THIS IS NOT JUST FOR CASES INVOLVING DOCTORS!!! yes, the punitives caps are...but that's not the bulk of the bill...and not at all what my original posts here were about at all.
For the *last* time, lawyers protect their own. Plain and simple. I don't care about your personal specialization as it is not relevant to this debate. Nice way to change the wording after the fact. Your argument does *not* stand. You were deliberately misrepresenting the cap on non-economic damages, which is NOT $250,000 but is $500,000. You tried to sneak one over on us, hoping you wouldn't get called out on it. You were, and now you have a lot of egg on your face. Any way you cook this egg which is now on your face -- sunny side up, scrambled, or over easy -- when a lawyer tries to put $500,000 into the context of a trivial amount of money, you know that the system has spiralled out of control. I'd be upset too if Lotto Texas was only $500,000 this week instead of $4mm. This is now the mindset thanks to the trial lawyers. When hard working professionals have their lifeblood stripped from them by trial lawyers for no fault of their own, there exists a problem. The voters agreed with me last fall.
TJ -- when did i say there were mutliple parties to blame in my hypothetical?? i said if you sued the nursing home the cap would be $250K...you wandered into unknown areas to try the economic damages card. when shown your ignorance, you now claim that i'm wrong because the cap is $500K for multiple parties...which would only be pertinent if my hypo allowed for multiple parties. keep trying, junior.... oh..and by the way...if you keep saying i said that amount of money was trivial, it still won't make it true.
and then the rest of my quote talks about deterrant value to the nursing home. not to other defendants...not to 3rd party defendants. the point is, if your sole claim is against the freaking nursing home, damages are capped at $250K. you're ridiculous and you know it. move along.
Max, you know that TJ is here for entertainment purposes only. Anybody with a brain knows that you and Reffy stated your case and stated it well. Let the boy have his laughs
actually, you were the one i was thinking of when i started this thread..aren't you a texas lawyer?? or am i wrong??
Yeah, and a defense one at that so I don't know nothing about your Texas sized damages caps and your fancy CLE's.
oh...my bad!!! if you get a chance...check out new Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 167...basically it imports a bit of the UK's loser pays system.
Have to disagree with this one...lawyers protect nobody but themselves! We are vultures, scumbags, etc....why would we help out someone else if it is not in our own interest?! Hey, there's a reason we became lawyers in the first place! By the way, law is a good career choice for people who love to argue, therefore 90 % of the posters in the D&D forum should have become lawyers anyway...
Oh yeah. Worst experience of my life. Not so much the exam but the actual trip to albany. Talk about depressing.
Interesting. The words "so much" leave some ambiguity as to whether you achieved success on the exam. That stinks. I hear if you want to retake it, then you have to wait something like 6 months.
Actually, the words "not so much" in that context leaves very little ambiguity as to SamFisher's success on the New York bar. I'm sure that had he failed it, it would've been the worst experience of his life. As it is, the exam wasn't to hard for him.
I owned the multistate TJ. But anyway, maybe I will just email you my real name, class year, resume, and a few photos in order to augment your 'figuring stuff out about other posters lives and holding it over their heads" schtick.
