Tort Reform Allows Wrongdoers to Profit

Each and every year insurance companies across the country and the so-called tort reformers and big corporations start their annual assaults on the civil justice system. Their efforts are well-planned and well-financed and attempt to sell the myth of tort reform to the American people. The tort-reformers have long claimed that the judicial system is broken and needs fixing, while their statement are false, it works out well for the insurance companies and big business.

This approach, which started about 20 years ago, has resulted in folks around the country eventually accepting the notion that some type of reform was needed. Hence, the term “tort reform” was conceived and it caught on. Ordinary folks hearing the term really didn’t know exactly what a “tort” was, but they understood that “reform” means that it needed fixing.

It’s amazing when you consider that the major wrongdoers in Corporate America are the very ones who have not only successfully pushed their version of tort reform over the past two decades, but are the only ones who actually benefit from the reforms brought about. What they really want to do is to destroy the American jury system. It’s always been a mystery to me that working men and women-and ordinary folks generally-would give their support to a movement designed to destroy the jury system. In effect they are hurting themselves and helping wrongdoers.

Having access to justice, and an independent judiciary, is something every American citizen needs and it’s something we should all fight to preserve.

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