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Re: [RC] [RC] those stinking rich insurance companies pay??? - Joe LongOh boy, has this issue pressed some hot buttons. On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 14:28:58 -0500, "RHONDA LEVINSON" <rhndlev@xxxxxxx> wrote: <<vote for more limited liability. keep the lawyers from getting rich. >> This is SO wrong. Insurance companies make an insane amount of money; No, they don't. Many of them are mutuals, too -- I use USAA and I'm an "owner" and not only get good rates, but I get back a rebate at the end of the year if they pay out less in claims than expected. it's not the lawyers getting rich. Huh? When they take a third or half of what a jury awarded to the injured person? You sure fooled me. And yes, the insurance companies are getting rich on all of our backs. They want their profits to remain insane, so they keep cranking up our insurance premiums. If you want more regulations and a better tort system, vote for more accountability for insurance companies. Vote for better and stronger laws for insurance bad faith claims. Uh oh ... my bullshit detector is running at full volume. Limited liability laws insult our very legal system. A jury of 12 people has to agree that a plaintiff is entitled to whatever judgment that the plaintiff gets. Who are we, people who have never seen the evidence in the case, to decide ahead of time that a particular person should only receive a certain limited amount of money. "We" are the voters in this republic, who have a right to expect our legislators to correct abuses such as absurd jury awards (out of sympathy preyed on by slick lawyers). In Kansas, for instance, you are entitled to only $250,000.00 in non-economic damages no matter how bad your injury is. Does that sound like a lot? It isn't. Picture being totally paralyzed and your compensation for that is $250,000.00. Would $250,000 adequately compensate you for that? Would that make you whole (which is the purpose of tort law)? That is the kind of situation that tort reform laws cause. You cannot categorically set a sum of money that a person should receive in compensation for an injury. Read what you wrote again: "non-economic damages." If you are paralyzed for life your loss of income (as well as medical costs) are economic damages, not subject to that cap. "Pain and suffering" is the hook on which so many excessive "soak the insurance company" awards are based. Sorry, but this subject really gets me going. Most of the people talking about tort reform have no clue what is really happening in the legal system, and I'll guarantee you that these people have never been seriously injured when it was not their fault. It gets me going too, but not from the same point of view. Someone who is injured due to someone else's negligence should be justly compensated, for his loss, by those actually responsible (not whoever has the deepest pockets). They should not have "won the lottery" because a sharp lawyer knows how to push the jury's buttons. (I doubt that you hear them tell the jury "Better add on another couple of million, I want to buy a third house in Aspen.") Some of the stuff that's gone on with such things as asbestos and breast implants are pretty much scams, making some lawyers VERY rich at the expense of you, me, and just about everyone else. For the record, the target of my contempt is the trial lawyers getting rich exploiting the system, at our expense, not the majority of hard-working, honest attorneys. -- Joe Long jlong@xxxxxxxx http://www.rnbw.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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