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: Lawbeat

Frank vs. Forbes: Correction or spin?

By Mark Obbie

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Ted Frank of the American Enterprise Institute is one of several experts that Forbes senior editor Daniel Fisher quotes in this story about the likely fate of federal tort-reform policy, depending on who wins the presidential election. But Frank isn't just any old source. He has a rather prominent microphone to talk back if he's unhappy with a story. And talk back he does today at Overlawyered.com, the popular tort-reform blog. Frank declares himself "very disappointed" with the story by Fisher, whom Frank says "usually understands legal issues and has done some good reporting about trial-lawyer abuses." The first claimed error: where Fisher calls tort reform a "catchall phrase for legislative measures designed to make it harder for individuals to sue businesses." Frank's retort:

[M]any tort reforms make it easier for individuals with legitimate claims to sue businesses. Tort reforms are simply measures to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the civil justice system; they’re opposed by trial lawyers because they derive billions of dollars of wealth from inaccuracies and inefficiencies in the civil justice system, and supported by businesses and consumers that are the victims of such inaccuracies and inefficiencies.

Get serious! That's pure lobbyist spin (from the same school of political semantics that, ironically enough, gave us the American Association for Justice in place of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America). Granted, Fisher's description of tort reform is simplistic, but any objective reader would agree that it's not wrong. The rest of Frank's critique is similarly nitpicky, which is certainly biting the journalistic hand that feeds tort reformers (considering Forbes' historically relentless attacks on trial lawyers). It's great to get post-publication, public feedback from a quoted source, but it's too bad that Frank uses the opportunity to howl about inaccuracies when all he really wants is the ability to edit a story to his liking.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on August 11, 2008 (boomark / email).