Social injustice: trial lawyers woo social conservatives

National Review, August 29, 2005 by Ramesh Ponnuru

The Center for a Just Society is certainly right to say that not everything that travels under the name of tort reform deserves support. It argues, correctly, that federal tort reform can trample on state prerogatives. If a state has lawsuit laws that lead doctors to leave it, it ought to be the responsibility of the state's voters and politicians to change those laws. On the other hand, frivolous product-liability lawsuits can't be avoided by skipping the border. No state can shield a drugmaker or medical-device manufacturer located in its jurisdiction from abusive lawsuits filed in other states. In such cases, it's up to the federal government to protect interstate commerce by restraining the states. The Republicans' medical-liability bill should be amended so that it touches only interstate commerce. But the trial lawyers, and the Center, oppose the whole thing.

LIFE AND LITIGATION

The Center opposes the bill on the theory that it is "pro-abortion" because it provides immunity to the makers of RU-486 (the "abortion cocktail"), and prescribing doctors, from lawsuits by the families of women who die as a result of the drug. But this immunity is partial. What the bill says is that if a product or treatment complies with federal regulations, the people who made the product or supervised the treatment can't be sued for punitive damages if something goes wrong. They can be sued for compensatory damages, including damages for causing pain and suffering. But if they're compliant with FDA regulations, for example, the courts shouldn't punish them. The makers of RU-486 already enjoy some legal immunities thanks to Bill Clinton. But even if they didn't, the Center's argument would be faulty. Just as conservatives would not favor raising corporate-tax rates in order to drive companies involved in abortion out of business, they should not oppose efforts to improve the legal environment for corporations because they might help companies involved in abortion.

John Edwards illustrates the bankruptcy of the "pro-life" case for pro-plaintiff medical-malpractice laws. Suing obstetricians for causing cerebral palsy by failing to do C-sections was one of his most profitable lines of litigation. He has boasted about how he swayed jurors by assuming the voice of an unborn child pleading for help. But the evidence strongly suggests that cerebral palsy is usually genetic in origin, and almost never the result of a botched delivery. (One piece of evidence: C-sections have grown more common over the last few decades, while the incidence of cerebral palsy has stayed the same.) Lawsuits, and the resulting malpractice-insurance premiums, have driven obstetricians away from some areas.

In a forthcoming paper for the Journal of Legal Studies, law professor Jonathan Klick and economist Thomas Stratmann provide reasons to believe that such lawsuits result in infant deaths. Specifically, they find that caps on punitive damages in medical-malpractice lawsuits bring infant-mortality rates down. More doctors practice in states that adopt them. The health benefits flow primarily to black infants in rural areas. Klick thinks that federal legislation might have a positive effect on infant mortality, too (although he is careful to note that he does not endorse the legislation). The study undermines the claim that medical-malpractice reform is anti-life.