"Franc Zabkar" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 01:59:13 -0500, gothika
put
finger to keyboard and composed:

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 08:09:40 +1000, Franc Zabkar
wrote:

John Edwards, John Kerry's
running mate, has made a preposterously rich living chasing
ambulances. According to the July 19, 2004 issue of Time, he, like
many greedy lawyers, charges a whopping 33% for each successful
litigation. That means that hundreds of millions of dollars goes
into
the pockets of these parasites, and of course the public
ultimately
foots the bill. According to the Center for Public Integrity,
Edwards
won judgments totalling more than US$152m in 63 lawsuits.

The public always foots the bill because the greedy corporate
parasites refuse to take any kind of a loss, even when it's due to
their own selfish actions.
How typical of a Repube to always attack character instead of
honestly
debating the issues.

I'm not a Republican, nor a conservative. I choose to evaluate every
issue on its merits, rather than accept an indivisible bag of
prepackaged policies. In that respect I consider myself a democrat,
in
the dictionary sense of the word, not a "Democrat".

Who CARES if he chases ambulances! That's the JOB of a personal
injury
lawyer. At least he's there to get you some sort of justice.
Why don't you mention the lawyers for the defendants who all to
often
sneak in illegally to trick the injured party's signature on
liability
release forms.

I despise *all* lawyers. Their profession is devoid of ethics and is
founded purely on self interest. Any proposed legislation should
impose limits on legal fees - it should not be a case of open
slather.
To take one example, most cases of workers' compensation fraud in
Australia go unpunished, or uncontested, because legal costs exceed
the benefits gained. In fact, lawyers in Australia are an impediment
to justice, at least for the middle income earners. The rich scum
can
afford to buy any legal outcome they choose, and the dregs at the
bottom of the social order have access to free legal aid.

(DON"T say it doesn't happens, happens every day.)
Or that the defendants all to often clog up the justice system with
endless appeals thereby costing taxpayers millions in court costs.

Agreed. And nothing will change as long as voters continue to vote
for
lawyers.

In one case Edwards won damages in the amount of $4.2m for a child
born with brain damage and later diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
This
case has contributed to an increase of 5% in the numbers of
Caesarean
sections since 1970. Time goes on to say that "meanwhile, medical
research has been challenging the conventional wisdom that birth
trauma was the principal culprit in cerebral palsy."

Ceesareans DO carry more health risks contrary to what you would
like
to believe. The stats bear that out.

The US medical system is erring too heavily on the side of caution.
Other Western countries have much lower rates of C-sections. But
then
the USA has 2/3 of the world's lawyers looking over doctors'
shoulders.

In my area, the cost of professonal indemnity and public liability
insurance is so high, that the majority of obstetricians have
decided
to give up their profession. Many public functions are now extinct
because no insurer can be found to underwrite the risk. Every day,
TV
and newspaper advertisements extol the ambulance-chasing expertise
of
personal injury law firms. In fact, one firm emphasises its
specialty
as falling-on-your-arse-in-the-shopping-centre type incidents.

"There seems to be no scientific question that most of that injury
(cerebral palsy) occurs prenatally and is not related to the
delivery", says Dr H. Davis Burton, whose partner was a defendant
in a
lawsuit argued by Edwards and who later served as North Carolina's
secretary of health and human services.

Right! Let's take the word of another right wing conservative as
fact.
After all they NEVER tell lies or spin facts do they?

We should at least investigate the possibility that a good doctor
may
have been unfairly crucified.

Anyway, "how typical of a [Democrat?] to always attack character
instead of honestly debating the issues." ;-)

That said I believe we have sufficient tools in the arsenal of
the
medical science that when combined with the correct policy of
erring
on the side of caution we can maintain some level of safety in
consumer products.
It will require a major overhauling of our current system of
government though.

Sure! Just repeal or nullify every law passed by Reagan, Bush
senior
and Dubya that robbed the individual of their rights to legal
redress
and we should at least be back to square one.
Having a government that actually served the interests of the
individual voters and aggressively went after the corporate monster
would be nice too.

I agree with you in principle, it's just a matter of balance. For
example, there has to be some middle ground between the Ford Pinto
case on the one hand, and the McDonalds Hot Coffee incident on the
other.

If it were up to me, I would implement an independent panel of
intelligent laypersons to oversee court outcomes. This would be a
kind
of Stupid Judgments committee made up of people who know that coffee
is hot, and that fatty foods make you fat.


- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 's' from my address when replying by email.


Er gents, with respect this is an international electronics repair
group. I am sure most readers (who are probably outside the US) would,
like me, prefer that you found somewhere else to argue your domestic
politics, especially such long posts. All it does is use up valuable
bandwidth and for people who pay by time for dial-up access it costs
them money to see it to boot.


--
Woody in Harrogate, UK