Nevada needs tort reform

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 29 Jan 2002 14:09:04 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JAN. 29, 2002
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Nevada needs tort reform
Obstetricians, already in short supply, closing down or fleeing

When would be an appropriate time for the state of Nevada to embrace tort reform? When the state's last practicing obstetrician shuts his or her doors?

Malpractice insurance rates for Nevada physicians treating highest-risk patients -- obstetricians, neurosurgeons, and emergency room doctors -- are in the process of jumping, in round figures, from $40,000 last year to a new average of $200,000 annually, per physician, with no halt in sight. And area health professionals and insurance companies both say most of that prodigious leap is due to frivolous malpractice lawsuits and the absence of any cap on damages which can be sought in court.

One Las Vegas obstetrician who's been practicing in the area more than 30 years tells the Review-Journal's Joelle Babula he'll be selling his practice this week because he cannot afford insurance premiums slated to increase from $40,000 to $130,000. "I just cannot afford it. I would be working for nothing," the doctor says.

Another local doctor now limits his practice to gynecology and has stopped delivering babies, after seeing his insurance premiums leap from $46,000 to $225,000. "I just could not financially afford to keep delivering babies," explains OB/GYN Steve Kramer. Nurse-midwives are also fleeing the profession in the face of equivalent insurance rate hikes, from $7,500, give or take, to $50,000 per year.

"Our company was granted a 35 percent rate increase due to the frequency and severity of claims in the state," explains Dennis Coffin, the Nevada representative for American Physician's Assurance, one of the state's larger medical malpractice carriers. "Nevada is getting a really bad reputation."

Dr. John Nowins, president of the Clark County OB/GYN Society, is asking Gov. Kenny Guinn to call a special legislative session to set a cap on malpractice jury awards, and to institute penalties for lawyers and patients who pursue complaints later determined to be frivolous.

"We're not saying that doctors who have done something terribly wrong shouldn't be held responsible, but we can't handle these personal injury attorneys attacking us and suing us relentlessly," Dr. Nowins explains.

Nevada malpractice attorneys respond that the real problem is price-gouging by the insurance carriers. "If doctors are being sued successfully, then they've obviously done something wrong," says local attorney Charles Lybarger. "We are protecting the public from doctors that make mistakes and hurt people."

In fact, jury-award caps (some are proposing that Nevada impose one like California's, which limits damages to $250,000) do effectively limit an injured party's access to the courts. If a breadwinner earning six figures a year is killed or permanently disabled through gross negligence and malpractice, the courts should give that family at least some hope of being made whole, if we expect plaintiffs to forgo extra-legal solutions.

But the willingness of attorneys like Mr. Lybarger to see those who "do something wrong ... and hurt people" properly penalized and assessed for the damages they cause is certainly welcome. Since excessive insurance premiums caused in part by nuisance suits certainly "hurt" patients whose doctors close their doors -- requiring the fewer remaining doctors to see more patients and thus deliver lower-quality care in order to make ends meet -- it follows that such suits indisputably "hurt people."

The personal injury bar should thus have no objection to the institution of a "loser pays" system in which those whose lawsuits are found to be without substantial merit are required to pay the defendants' legal fees and court costs, as well as reasonable compensation for their time lost.

As for "price-gouging" by insurance firms, the solution, as ever, is to clear away any regulatory obstructions that bar entry into the field by more competitors (while also repealing the regressive state tax on insurance premiums.) The Chevy dealer can't very well charge you $50,000 for a Geo once the new Hyundai dealer sets up across the street.

"Loser pays" is the first tort reform Nevada needs. No one is saying doctors should not be liable for malfeasance or non-feasance far out of line with normal practice. But too many in our litigious society today believe "someone must pay" for any negative outcome ... even one which, a generation ago, would have been more sensibly accepted as "the will of God."

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $96 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591, where information on his next book, "The Ballad of Carl Drega," is also available. Vin's first book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement" (the 1999 "Freedom Book of the Year") is available at 1-800-244-2224.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair