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May 12, 2008

Mississippi Gets the Better of Looting Lawyers

Mississippi has been the canary in the coalmine of runaway lawsuit moonbattery. As the WSJ notes:

For most of the past 30 years, Mississippi has ranked as one of the poorest as well as one of the most litigious states. The two statistics are related.

Due to a legal climate easily exploited by pathologically greedy John Edwards types, businesses have given Mississippi a wide birth — as have doctors, whose malpractice premiums were going up by 25% a year.

One of the worst places, in term of frivolous lawsuits, was Jefferson County. It became renowned as the lawsuit capital of the country, with more plaintiffs than residents. This is the infamous county where one pharmacist was named in more than 1,000 lawsuits. In one legendary case against a pharmaceutical company that sold the diet pill Pondimin (part of the weight-loss combination known as fen-phen, which was later banned), a Jefferson County jury awarded $1 billion to the family of a woman who had taken the drug.

Wonderful as the notion of free fortunes may sound to some, given a choice between lawyers on one hand or employers and doctors on the other, sooner or later anyone in his right mind will turn away from the former. Mississippi wised up and "transformed itself from judicial hell hole to job magnet":

The law that eventually passed was every trial lawyers' worst nightmare. It capped awards for noneconomic damages, and prevented the popular practice whereby a plaintiff attorney seeking to bring a class-action shops around for a court where he'll be likely to get a favorable ruling or judgment.

Almost overnight, the flow of lawsuits began to dry up and businesses started to trickle in. Federal Express invested $1 billion in a new facility in the state. Toyota chose Mississippi over about a dozen other states for a new $1.2 billion, 2,000-worker auto plant. The auto maker has stipulated that the company would pull up stakes if the tort reforms were overturned by the legislature or activist judges.

A drastic drop in lawsuits has cut medical malpractice insurance costs by 30–40%, stemming the flow of doctors out of the state and making healthcare more affordable for everyone.

There's even better news:

Fewer Mississippians are heading to law school and more are looking at business school as the best way to get rich. Many in the younger generation are pursuing a career path that will make them wealth creators, not wealth redistributors.

Unfortunately the country as a whole may not learn from Mississippi's lesson. Democrat gains in state legislatures could spell the repeal of the modest tort reform laws Republicans have managed to get through. Again we see how crucial it is to vote, even for those who can't bring themselves to pull the lever for Lettuce McCain.

On a tip from Oiao.

Posted by Van Helsing at May 12, 2008 8:36 AM

Comments

Posted by: Corona at May 12, 2008 12:38 PM

Posted by: Dan Quayle at May 12, 2008 8:29 PM