Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue

Thanks to constant political oratory against frivolous lawsuits and jackpot justice it is widely known that theres a legal crisis in this country. President Bush never misses an opportunity to call for laws that would bring more common sense to a legal system that he claims is out of control wrecking the economy driving doctors out of their practices bankrupting small businesses and costing American jobs. Journalists repeat the charges without examining them. As a result the lawsuit issue has moved to the political front burner and in the past three years state after state has responded by limiting citizens rights to sue. Just this year alone the Republicanled Congress has passed restrictions on class action lawsuits and is steps away from enacting limits on medical malpractice lawsuits. But is there really a crisis? National data show that the number of civil suits is falling not rising and that the average damage award is also going down. Despite intense media hype to the contrary the number of personal injury lawsuits filed every year has been tumbling for the past decade. Upon closer examination the stories of ridiculous lawsuits usually turn out to be false or badly misleading. The crisis in short appears to be a phantom. So how do we explain the scary headlines? Whos behind the tort reform movement and what are the real goals? Blocking the Courthouse Door will show that the movement against so-called greedy trial lawyers and irresponsible plaintiffs is the result of a concerted and successful campaign by large corporations to get this issue on the table and thus limit their own vulnerability in the civil justice system. They have spent decades and many millions of dollars on focus groups and Madison Avenue public relations research. They have funded institutes sponsored academic research bankrolled politicians set up phony astroturf grassroots organizations (with chamber of commerce return addresses) and fed copy to all-too-gullible journalists. For corporations the self-interest involved is fairly plain. Tobacco companies no longer able to dodge the bullet of liability for knowingly selling poisons are making an end run around the civil justice system. If they cant win a class action suit theyll make suing itself illegal. Insurance companies drowning in red ink from mismanagement and bad investments in the bond market hike insurance rates by huge sums and blame malpractice suits. The doctors in turn blame greedy lawyers -- and their own injured patients. And for Republicans the campaign provides an extra bonus: defunding the Democratic Party. Limits on lawsuits cut into the income of some of the Democratic Partys most generous donors the trial lawyers who are often the only source of campaign cash for Democrats in many states. By exposing some of the dubious characters corporate chicanery skewed research fudged numbers and bogus journalism that have buttressed the calls for lawsuit reformStephanie Mencimer shows whos behind the movement to close the courthouse doors and how theyve successfully persuaded millions of Americans to give up their critical legal rights without fully understanding what theyre losing -- often until its too late.