ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, May 10, 1996 TAG: 9605100033
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ADAM D. THIERER
IT'S TOUGH being a trial lawyer these days. The public loathes you. Businesses fear you. And Congress just passed legislation limiting those million-dollar damage awards that have made you fabulously rich. Where do you turn for relief?
To the one man whose support for trial lawyers has never wavered: President Bill Clinton.
As expected, the president has come to the lawyers' rescue, vetoing the Common Sense Liability Reform Act the moment it hit his desk.
It would be one thing if the president honestly believed the bill he vetoed would hurt consumers. But he knows, as does the rest of Washington, that the reform measure is a relatively mild effort.
Consider: The bill doesn't apply to all lawsuits, only to product-liability lawsuits. It doesn't affect compensatory damages for the payment of medical costs, lost wages, and ``pain and suffering,'' only damages designed to ``punish'' a company. And it doesn't even eliminate those punitive damages - it merely limits them to $250,000 or twice the amount of compensatory damages. And if judges decide $250,000 isn't enough to teach a lesson to the offending company, they can waive the cap and impose penalties as big as before.
All in all, pretty tame ``reform.'' So why has the president vetoed it? In a word: money. Lawyers have been among President Clinton's most generous campaign contributors, ponying up $3 million in 1992 and an additional $2.5 million during the first nine months of last year. A politician, the president knows he'll need all the support he can get from the trial lawyers this fall. Thus the payback.
Even some members of the president's own party are wise to his strategy, and disapprove. Listen to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., easily one of the most liberal members of Congress, upon hearing of the impending veto: ``Unfortunately, special interests and raw political considerations in the White House have overridden sound policy judgment.''
Most Americans, fed up with stories of lawyers raking in undeserved millions, would agree. But even the outrageous headlines (``Man stumbles, wins $100 billion from maker of defective slippers'') don't tell half the story. The fact is, some companies are now so afraid of getting sued they're pulling products off the shelf - frequently, products that could save lives.
Most people have heard about the lawsuit against Dow Corning over silicone breast implants (which, by the way, all available evidence shows are safe). Dow Corning lost, filed for bankruptcy and may no longer produce the raw silicone used in implants. Two problems: That silicone is also used in a device called a shunt that keeps alive some 50,000 children with hydrocephalus (water on the brain), and Dow Corning is the only manufacturer of the raw silicone used to make shunts.
What happens if Dow Corning becomes unable or unwilling to produce silicone? Will some other company fill the void? Not likely.
Flush from their victory against the makers of breast implants, trial lawyers have already hinted they're ready to make all silicone devices a target in lawsuits. As one anguished and angry mother of an 8-year-old hydrocephalic girl wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal, ``How can anyone put the interests of a small group of trial lawyers seeking the next big class-action lawsuit over the lives of children?''
The bill President Clinton vetoed most likely would have prevented at least a few companies from being sued out of existence for manufacturing life-saving silicone devices. But with Congress unable to muster the two-thirds' vote necessary to override a veto, the lawyers' victory is complete, as is the defeat for many Americans with life-threatening ailments.
There's a lesson clear: Never underestimate the political power of wealthy special interests. President Clinton's veto, which could be called ``The Lawyer Enrichment Act of 1996,'' is a classic example of how one special interest was able to buy a favorable outcome in Washington.
But don't blame the lawyers too much - they're simply looking out for themselves, using the same methods employed by every other special interest.
Adam D. Thierer is the Alex C. Walker fellow in economic policy at The Heritage Foundation in Washington.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune
LENGTH: Medium: 78 linesby CNB