After decades of concealing and lying about dangers of their products with near impunity, giant tobacco and asbestos corporations have faced consequences in recent years via the civil-lawsuit justice system.

Damage awards in civil suits exist not only to compensate the affected people and their families, but also to punish companies with consequences that can serve as an effective deterrent. Yet "tort reform" legislation on its way into federal law will hamstring such lawsuits. It bans class-action lawsuits (where a single lawsuit represents hundreds, or even thousands, of harmed people) from being brought into state courts unless at least two-thirds of plaintiffs are from a single state. Instead, these suits would be brought before (generally) less receptive federal court judges.

This legislation may ensure that some such suits will never be heard, thanks to a 1985 Supreme Court ruling that federal courts cannot hear class actions in which laws of affected states have "material" differences. The bill is just one front that regressive Republicans have presented in their drive to limit citizen ability to hold corporations accountable.

Perhaps the most important battle will be over the corporate-backed attempt to limit punitive damages -- intended to deter egregious and outrageous conduct -- to $250,000. The Ford Pinto scandal of the 1970s demonstrates why weakening corporate liability is downright dangerous. Ford executives possessed pre-production crash test results demonstrating the car's gas tank could explode in relatively minor rear-end collisions. Internal memos revealed that Ford's managers decided settling civil lawsuits brought by victims' families would be cheaper than spending $11 per car to fix the problem. They began selling Pintos in 1971 and allowed dozens of people to die each year.

Then, in 1978, a jury awarded $124 million in punitive damages to a victim who was severely burned (equaling about one year's savings from not addressing the problem). Company executives quickly crunched new numbers which told them to fix the tanks.

Other companies took similar corrective actions after lawsuits forced them to pay punitive damages for willfully endangering customers or the public. According to a 1987 study by the corporate-funded Conference Board, "Where product liability has had a notable impact -- where it has most significantly affected management decision-making -- has been in the quality of the products themselves. Managers say products have become safer, manufacturing procedures have been improved, and labels and use instructions have become more explicit."

Now "tort reform" advocates want to go back to the bad old days. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist of Tennessee talks about "predatory trial lawyers" yet works to grant partial immunity to corporations which knowingly produce products that kill or maim. If it took $124 million to get Ford's attention in 1978, imagine how little impact a $250,000 penalty would have today on the $162 billion company.

One shouldn't assume that if Bush's agenda prevails, judges and prosecutors would be drumming their fingers in empty courtrooms. . According to a Public Citizen study, corporations are 160 times as likely to sue as an average person, and 69 percent more likely than individual tort plaintiffs to be sanctioned for filing frivolous claims. Of course Bush's tort reform proposals don't address "runaway lawsuits" by corporations.

Yes, the system could stand some improvements. Allowing plaintiffs and their attorneys to keep the bulk of the punitive damages serves no social purpose and can lead to corruption. Instead, a substantial portion of punitive damage awards could go toward public health and safety advancement, or other causes.

But if the regressives have their way, you'll have little recourse should some corporation decide that releasing toxic chemicals in your neighborhood makes good business sense, but courts will lower the hammer if your kids download songs from the Internet without paying.

Punitive damages go back a long way -- more than 4,000 years to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known legal code. They have been incorporated in the laws of great civilizations since, from the Hebrews to the Romans to English common law and finally the United States. Attempting to roll them back isn't conservative; it is a radical move that threatens a basic principle of justice that has been part of civilized society since its very beginning.

Jeffrey Kaplan is an organizer with the San Francisco Bay chapter of ReclaimDemocracy.org, a nonprofit that seeks to restore corporate responsibility.

© 2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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