Closing the Courthouse Door

"Real change comes from the bottom up, not the top down. The genius of
the American system has been to let that change flow upward, from
neighborhoods to cities to states and then to the federal government."
George W. Bush February 26, 2001.

Unfortunately, the difference between words and deeds in Washington is
often shocking even to those who think they have seen it all. Alicia
Mundy in the October 15, 2008 edition of the Wall Street Journal
reports: "Bush administration officials, in their last weeks in office,
are pushing to rewrite a wide array of federal rules with changes or
additions that could block product-safety lawsuits by consumers and
states."

What President George W. Bush should have said is that he believes in
states' rights when they are in the interest of Big Business and their
lobbyists in Washington. Mr. Bush and his cronies would like to forget
about those harmed by dangerous products or reckless conduct. Indeed,
Bush & Company seem to regard the civil justice system as a
nuisance that threatens to destroy our economy and way of life. In
reality, America's civil justice system plays an indispensable role in
our democracy. When the rights of injured consumers are vindicated in
court, our society benefits in countless ways: compensating victims and
their families for shattering losses (with the cost borne by the
wrongdoers rather than taxpayers); preventing future injuries by
deterring dangerous products and practices and spurring safety
innovation; stimulating enforceable safety standards; educating the
public to risks associated with certain products and services; and
providing society with its moral and ethical fiber by defining
appropriate norms of conduct.

The Center for Progressive Reform has in painstaking detail chronicled
the attack on the civil Justice system by the Bush Administration. In
"The Truth about Torts: Using Agency Preemption to Undercut Consumer
Health and Safety" legal scholars William Funk, Sidney Shapiro, David
Vladeck and Karen Sokol write: "In recent years, the Bush
administration has launched an unprecedented aggressive campaign to
persuade the courts to preempt state tort actions.... Widespread
preemption of state tort law would significantly undermine, if not
eliminate, the rights of individuals to seek redress for injuries
caused by irresponsible and dangerous business practices and to hold
manufacturers and others accountable for such socially unreasonable
conduct." (See: https://www.progressiveregulation.org).

And, Les Weisbrod, the President of the American Association for
Justice (formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America)
hit the nail on the head when he said: "In effect the Bush
administration made the safety of Americans secondary to corporate
profits." Mr. Weisbrod added: "Big business lobbyists have been on a
crusade to destroy state consumer protection laws, and further stack
the deck against American consumers." The American Association for
Justice has just published a report titled: "Get Out of Jail Free: A
Historical Perspective of How the Bush Administration Helps
Corporations Escape Accountability" - this report is available at: www.justice.org/getoutofjailfree.

Tort deform comes in many shapes and sizes - but the common theme is
that tort deform severely damages Americans' cherished constitutional
right to trial by jury. It ties the hands of jurors, preventing them
from doing justice as the case before them requires. Only the judges
and juries see, hear, and evaluate the evidence in these cases. But it
is the politicians, absent from the courtrooms, who push bills greased
by campaign cash that send a perverse message to judge and jury.

Tort law has produced decades of slow but steady progress in state
after state respecting the physical integrity of human beings against

harm and recognition that even the weak and defenseless deserve
justice. Instead of seeing this evolution as a source of national and
global pride, a coalition of insurance companies, corporate defendants'
lobbies, and craven politicians, led by George W. Bush, want to destroy
our civil justice system.

When Georgetown Law School Professor David Vladeck testified before the
Senate Judiciary Committee on September 12, 2007, he noted that the
Bush Administration has "seized on regulatory preemption as a way to
cut back dramatically on State law remedies for those injured by
products and services Americans depend on every day for their health
and well-being - medicines, medical devices, motor vehicles, the
mattress on which we and our children sleep, and the commuter trains
millions of us take to work every day."

Let us hope that Congress and the Supreme Court stop Mr. Bush from once
again trampling the Constitutional rights of citizens throughout the
land and preventing victims of corporate violence from obtaining
justice in a court of law.