Word: torts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...finished." It helps too that the new legal strategy of states filing third-party claims against the tobacco companies to recoup the Medicaid dollars spent treating smoking-related illness involves possible monetary settlements--and legal fees--so huge that anti-tobacco litigation is now attracting the top guns of tort law. To date, five states--Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi, West Virginia and Massachusetts--have filed such suits. Maryland plans to join the fray soon, and Texas may follow. In most states, prestigious private firms have agreed to bear all costs of litigation, hoping to recoup those, and much more, from their...
...they have discovered common ground in tort reform, and are working hard for three initiatives that have already qualified for California's March primary ballot. Proposition 200 would establish a "no-fault" auto-insurance system in which insurers pay benefits regardless of who causes an accident. Proposition 201 would discourage shareholder lawsuits by requiring unsuccessful litigants to pay the corporation's legal fees. And Proposition 202 would sharply limit lawyers' contingency fees in personal-injury cases that are settled within 60 days. The initiatives will be voted on separately, but their backers, in order to create a wider base...
...forces have put together a diverse alliance of their own, including senior citizens (many of whom are stockholders) and civil rights advocates who fear that lower contingency fees will shut out poor clients. "These so-called tort reforms are bought and paid for by the Silicon Valley guys," says William Carrick, a consultant to the No forces. "They know that if they only put the shareholders' initiative forward, they'll get voted down. So they camouflage it with the no-fault and fee caps...
Horwitz says expert witnesses have become indispensable in tort and personal injury cases. But these expert witnesses are very expensive...
...TURNS OUT, WE DO NOT reserve all our tears and rage these days for battles over the flat tax and tort reform. Sometimes matters of more tragic consequence command our passions. That was the case last week when Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, expressed shame over America's conduct of the Vietnam War. Suddenly, hot arguments over the justice of that war resumed as if interrupted only by a pause for breath, rather than the passage of decades...