Personal Injury Law

Joan Claybrook Of Public Citizen on What's In _ and behind _ a Phrase Really Does Matter

By Wayne Parsons

If you get a degree in spin at your local mind twisting institute, you'll have been taught that if you call something "reform" everyone will support it. At the first emotional reaction will be "I like Reform". The concept of reform is a positive one: reform, reshape, improve. But what they also learn is that if you want to trick people just tag on the word reform to whatever you want to do and it will sound good to a lot of people whose attention span is in the sound bite category. I confess: that's me, too. I mean who has time to figure anything out in this world. We are all working as fast and as furious as our hearts will allow.

So when Joan Claybrook, the greatest consumer advocate since Ralph Nader (actually a lot of what Nader gets credit for - Joan did) says to think hard about what "tort reform" means and not to use that phrase, I sit up and listen. Sorry Joan, I used the phrase, but I hear you and I want my readers to see why you caution us in the use of that subtle and tricky term "reform". Here is the gospel according to Joan Claybrook. I could not agree more with her. I hope you do too::

April 15, 1998

Statement by Joan Claybrook President, Public Citizen

Tallahassee, Florida

Good morning. I'm Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, a nationwide grassroots organization with more than 120,000 members. I have come to Tallahassee today to urge Gov. Chiles to summarily veto this bill and stand up to the greedy corporate bigwigs who are pushing this wholesale slaughter of our civil justice system. In all my years of public advocacy, this is one of the most sinister, odious pieces of anti-consumer legislation I have ever seen get passed by a legislative body.

The legislation currently being considered by the House and Senate conferees is the worst form of corporate welfare, because not only will it cost taxpayers, it will lead to untold human suffering and misery. And it is bad business for innocent tourists and your number-one industry. There is truly nothing good in this legislation, unless you are a greedy corporate mogul who wants to rake in even greater profits by stomping out the rights of innocent victims and escaping all accountability for your actions.

Please don't refer to this bill in your stories as "tort reform." Don't fall into the web of lies that the big corporations and their spin-meisters have spun so carefully. Don't deceive the people of Florida that way. This legislation is the License to Kill Bill.

This bill is the culmination of a well-organized, well-financed -- and incredibly deceitful -- drive by America's largest corporations over the past 15 years to relieve corporate wrongdoers, manufacturers of defective products and hospitals of their accountability under the law. And believe it or not -- rental car companies. We all know billionaire Wayne Huizenga has personally lobbied for this blockbuster trash heap to benefit his corporate empire. Unfortunately, $200,000 in campaign contributions can buy a lot of votes. But for the legislators it's a pretty cheap price for selling out real access to the courts for the entire population of Florida.

This effort is clearly focused on dismantling, not improving our civil justice system. Call it what it is -- a vicious attack on every resident and tourist in Florida. And for what? So out-of-state businesses like General Motors and DuPont can reap even greater profits at your expense? So a rental car tycoon like Huizenga can make another billion dollars by callously disregarding safety? So manufacturers of defective drugs and medical devices can get off scot free when their products maim and kill innocent people? So that operators of daycare centers, hotels, theme parks and restaurants can forget all about providing a safe and secure environment in which their patrons won't be beaten, raped, robbed or mugged?

Rep. Jim King, the third ranking Republican in the House, got it right when he admitted in the Miami Herald last week that this bill is a quote payback to business interests who paid to elect this legislature in 1996. Is this what our representatives have become -- prostitutes to those with the most money?

The stench rising from this bill is a black cloud hanging over the state of Florida. It weakens virtually every aspect of Florida's tort system.

For instance, it would let drug and medical device companies who sell defective products off the hook simply because the Food and Drug Administration approved their products. Well guess what? These industries recently succeeded in ramming through Congress a bill that severely weakens the FDA's ability to regulate their products. So they are attacking safety regulations in Washington and then in Florida saying we won't pay for the human suffering our products cause -- because they were approved by the federal government! With this law, we will see more medical disasters like the Dalkon shield, more drugs like DES, and more Bjork-Shiley heart valves.

What if you had bought a defective Ford Pinto? In Wayne's World, if its gas tank exploded in a rear crash one single day past an arbitrary 12-year time period, you have no recourse.

In Wayne's World, women, children and low-income workers are treated as second-class citizens, because this bill arbitrarily limits economic damages. It says that a housewife's life is not as valuable as a rich executive's.

In Wayne's World, rental car companies can hand over the keys to dangerous, uninsured drivers knowing taxpayers will pick up the tab for costly medical care of innocent crash victims.

In Wayne's World, there will be no incentive for corporations to behave responsibly, to ensure the products and services they provide are safe and sound.

If this bill passes into law, who will stand up for consumers? Who will punish wrongdoers? Who will keep unsafe products off the market?

The answers should be obvious -- no one! And that's exactly what this bill's supporters want.

Thank you.

I know - this is a quote from Joan talking in 1998, but it still applies. Here is an article I wrote that gives more of what Joan Claybrook is saying:

The History Of Tort Reform - A Story of Corporate Greed And A Conspiracy Against Justice For The People

And for anyone who doesn't know who Joan Claybrook is and what she has meant to consumers take a look at this from Public Citizen:

I am proud that Public Citizen under my leadership has played such a significant role in Congress, in government agencies and in the courts to protect the public health, safety and democracy for everyone in the U. S. In the past 27 years, we have helped pass significant laws benefiting consumers, opened access to government information, enhanced congressional ethics and campaign reform, as well as stopped some of industry's most egregious efforts to rollback public protections. Among our accomplishments:

• Airbags are now standard equipment in all motor vehicles sold in the U.S., as well as in countries all over the world. Just in the U.S., they save almost 3,000 lives a year. Additionally, the federal government is being forced by our work to issue critically important vehicle safety standards to prevent rollover, upgrade roof strength and mitigate ejection (rollover crashes kill 10,800 people a year), improve tire safety and require transparency in auto industry dealings with the regulatory agency to protect the public against safety defects.
• The expansion of dangerous triple-trailer trucks was stopped, limiting their operation to about a dozen, mostly western, states.
• Major changes in congressional ethics and lobbying requirements were adopted in 1995 and 2007 with our intense efforts, including a gift ban, limits on use of corporate aircraft and expansive reporting requirements.
• We helped to secure enactment of a major campaign finance reform bill that bans soft (unregulated) money that was often doled out in huge amounts to the political parties, as well as regulation of phony 'issue ads' in political campaigns, and worked to assure it was found to be constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Legislation to tie the hands of government regulators was blocked. We played a pivotal role in 1995 in stopping – by one vote – the Gingrich/Dole bill that would have rolled back the ability of regulators to issue health, safety and environmental standards.
• We were instrumental with our investigative research in defeating efforts by the super-rich to eliminate the estate tax, which would have cost the Treasury a trillion dollars.
• We fought for years to keep access to the courthouse door open for victims of product defects and medical malpractice by defeating, again and again, legislation to restrict damage awards.
• Our litigation group has brought hundreds of public interest lawsuits in federal district and courts of appeal and in the U.S. Supreme Court, including achieving a landmark victory that preserves White House electronic records and assures electronic records (not just paper records) are available under the Freedom of Information Act.

Our efforts produced these and countless other victories.

Joan has stepped down but her wisdom remains. Aloha Ka Kou, Joan!

Full post as published by Honolulu Personal Injury Lawyer on May 11, 2009 (boomark / email).