Fear of "Frivolous" COVID Lawsuits Misplaced?

[TexasTowelie]

by Donald Buckman

In last week’s Static, Annie Spilman of the National Federation of Independent Business unleashed more emotional adjectives — “greedy” and “opportunistic” trial lawyers and “predatory” lawsuits — than facts or rational suggestions.

Spilman seems particularly terrified at the prospect that her organization’s small-business members might be inundated with “frivolous COVID-19-related lawsuits.”

Before retiring, I practiced more than 30 years in Fort Worth, representing mainly defendants, including for-profit and nonprofit employers ranging in size from General Motors to a few doctors practicing together. My other clients included numerous law enforcement officers, from patrolman to chief and sheriff, a few judges, cities and counties. I won some and lost some, as is true of most lawyers who go to court. Rarely I brought to court cases on behalf of fired workers.

Of all those lawsuits, I can count the frivolous ones on one hand with a finger or two to spare. Spilman does not define what she considers “frivolous” lawsuits, but I can assure her they are scarce. In my experience, they are disposed of quickly, long before trial. I was a defendant in one of them, in good company with two federal judges who were co-defendants. The three plaintiffs, representing themselves, sued me because I prevailed on behalf of my client in their previous do-it-yourself civil rights lawsuit. According to their theory, I violated their civil rights by defeating their first case. Another self-represented plaintiff sued a nonprofit for not hiring her when she applied for a job as a registered nurse. She alleged race discrimination. I quickly learned that her resume was totally fictitious. She lacked her claimed nursing license, university degree, and work experience. In another case, the plaintiffs sued a federal judge, my client, for allegedly browbeating them into settling, insisting that if they had been allowed to go to trial, they would have won and the jury’s verdict would have been far more generous than the settlement. Their frivolous lawyer wasted his and everyone else’s time because he overlooked the entirely justified doctrine of absolute judicial immunity, which protects judges doing their job.

Read more: https://www.fwweekly.com/2020/07/02/fear-of-frivolous-covid-lawsuits-misplaced/
(Fort Worth Weekly)

[Dustlawyer]

1. I have been a plaintiff's trial lawyer for 30 years.

1. We don’t get paid if we don’t recover;
2. We front all of the case expenses and do not get that money back if we don’t recover;
3. Insurance companies and juries don’t pay for crappy cases; and
4. Judges throw frivolous cases out in Summary judgement.

Many of the “cases” used by tort reformers are made up. Others are misrepresented as frivolous when they are in fact, meritorious. One such was the McDonalds hot coffee case. McDonalds decided to super-heat their coffee to get more coffee per bean and keep the coffee fresh longer. It was highly profitable even after confidentiality settling several burn cases. Stella Liebeck spilled this coffee in her lap while trying to take off the lid to add cream and sugar. She almost died from the burns on her privates and lost her external genitalia. The jury awarded one day of McDonalds coffee sales ($2 million dollars) which the judge thought was excessive so he remitted the jury’s verdict down to $900,000. Since McDonalds is a huge national advertiser the media slanted to story to make it appear as a frivolous case. Tort reform advocates used this case to pass tort reform around the country. The tort reform was not to stop frivolous lawsuits but to cap damages and make meritorious cases harder to prove. This has all but ended medical malpractice litigation in Texas.

Next time you want to make an ambulance chaser joke just remember who is behind taking your right to redress if an individual or corporation does you harm!