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American Tort Reform Association, Part I, building a new America with their partners including the American Chamber of Commerce

By Steve Lombardi

I wrote a post about the face of tort reform that the Chamber doesn't want you to see. It was a post about pit bulls and other vicious animals mauling small children and how tort reform neuters the law and justice. The point of that article was pit bull owners don't follow the law and don't seem to care about civil liability; thanks to the Chamber and the American Tort Reform Association.

If groups like the Chamber, continue on their single-minded campaign to destroy the American judiciary the situation with pit bull owners and others that cause injury will only get worse. Juries across the country are being poisoned by distortions of the truth. Jurors don't appreciate who the ATRA is and what the Chamber has become. The jurors that have been or become injured do appreciate what I'm talking about. The fact is that tort reform does nothing to reduce the number of injuries; tort reform shifts costs to the tax payers and in turn improves the bottom line of corporate America's profit and loss statements. The result of more tort reform is we need more good civil trial lawyers not fewer. And after corporate America and Wall Street have their way with freedom from responsibility from being a good corporate citizen, we will have more, not fewer law suits.

What America needs is pork reform not tort reform. But let's not get there quite yet. I wrote an article and the ATRA took offense so let me respond. The commenter was Darren McKinney from the American Tort Reform Association; he took offense to my position and I promised him I'd comment back this week. My response is too long for a comment and has to be a separate post. Here is the article so you can catch up and what follows is my comment to Mr. McKinney. I'll leave it to you to be the judge of what makes more sense to you, the taxpayer.

The Face of Tort Reform - The one the Chamber won't show you.

http://desmoines.injuryboard.com/property-owners-liability-slip-and-fall/pit-bull-attack-demonstrates-irrational-thinking-of-the-tort-reformer.aspx?googleid=264548

Mr. McKinney: You missed my point completely. But then again that's your organization's business isn't it; to mislead by distorting the facts of a few civil cases while bringing no attention to corporate fraud, malfeasance, greed, wrongdoing and the cost shifting that your organization promotes.

Before we get started allow me a few questions.

• I don't believe you are a lawyer. Are you a lawyer licensed in any state?

• Have you ever tried a case before a court of law?

• Before you became the Director of Communications for the ATRA, what did you do for a living?

I am a civil trial lawyer and have been for almost thirty years. I'm one of those people you want everyone to hate. It's working because I can sense it when I select a jury or meet people who don't know me but know I'm a civil trial lawyer.

I have tried law suits for clients you might know. Those clients include people mostly; hard working people who built the office building like the one you work in, constructed the roads that you use to drive to the Capital to lobby Congress and the cars that most American's drive. They even make the money that you use to buy groceries and contribute to Congressional election coffers. Do you drive an American car or truck? Mine are Ford trucks for the most part. I represent the working mothers and fathers and the American kids who make America what it is. My day is filled with broken limbs, dead bread-winners, ruptured discs, brain damaged folks and all those broken lives that the ATRA picks on. My clients are those people that actually built Wall Street and Main Street and Washington, DC and who on a daily basis are killed, maimed and catastrophically injured continuing to build this country. They are the one's your organization works overtime to make sure they don't have the opportunity to receive a fair shake through the American civil justice system. They are the ones whom your organization and the Chamber spend millions to throw under the bus with the few that probably no one likes and the Court system would have taken care of without interference from organizations like the ATRA.

I toil everyday for people that had nothing to do with your hot cup of coffee, the pair of pants lost at the drycleaners, the lost laptop computer, the goose at the store front or the box of cereal.

Question: Have you every looked an injured person or the relatives of the dead in the eye?

Answer:

While you focus on a cup of hot coffee, a pair of lost pants, one laptop and a box of cereal my focus has always been on repairing the lives of working folks, like my father and mother, ruined by traffic-related accidents, work related injuries, shoddy products, medical mistakes, legal mistakes, poor management, defective products and corporate fraud practiced on an unsuspecting and naïve general public. You organization points to a handful of cases then make a huge deal out of a few cases with million dollar ad campaigns so you can poison the juries across America against legitimate claims. Your organization's efforts are not to educate about the civil justice system, but to distort for profit. Your efforts are about as anti-American as the Bernie Madoff's of this country. Your organization is like any other communist group of thugs that promote ignorance while repressing too much thinking.

This is going to get long so let me stop for today; allow this part to sink in and for you to answer my questions. Tomorrow I'll follow-up with Part II: Tort Reform or Pork Reform?

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on June 17, 2009 (boomark / email).