Politics / A Winning Drive
Norquist, Grover G.
POLITICS %-.4rw 0/4 A Winning Drive by Grover G. Norquist M orton Blackwell, the Republican National Committeeman from Virginia, has long urged conservative activists and legislators to wage...
...Washington, D.C...
...The small number of trial lawyers is dwarfed by the 2.5 million unionized teachers whose dues are used by the NEA and other unions to create a political machine...
...Will it divide the liberal coalition...
...The present liberal coalition is supported by such pillars as labor unions, government workers, big-city political machines, left-wing intellectuals—and trial lawyers...
...Yet political consultant Gene Ulm, who specializes in state legislative races, rates the trial lawyer lobby as "second only to the teachers unions" in power at the state level...
...It divides the presumed liberal coalition by attracting black and Hispanic parents...
...The political implications of de-funding the trial lawyers would be staggering...
...Trial-lawyer money flows almost exclusively to Democrats and left-of-center candidates, and the motivation for this giving is rational self-interest...
...That's a figure larger than Whitman's promised income-tax cut...
...Michael J. Horowitz, a former Reagan official who is now a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Washington office, and Jeffrey O'Connell, a law professor at the University of Virginia, want to allow automobile drivers to waive their rights Grover G. Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...And regardless of who wins, school choice provides a potent rebuttal to the left's line of Give us more money or you don't care about education...
...to sue for non-economic damages ("pain and suffering") in return for lower insurance rates...
...has more lawyers than all Japan...
...They contribute heavily to trial-lawyer PAC run by ATLA...
...In other words, trial lawyers would lose about $5 billion each year if every motorist chose to opt out of pain and suffering through Horowitz-O'Connell...
...And possibly teachers' union members: Although the fearsome National Education Association opposes choice 100 percent, its chairman Kenneth Geiger admitted on national television that some 40 percent of unionized big city teachers send their own children to private schools—which presumably means they would welcome vouchers or tuition tax credits...
...The trial lawyers may be short on membership, but they're long on cash...
...In fact, only one major liberal group—the trial lawyers—stands opposed to this reform...
...If trial lawyers on average spent only one percent of their income on politics, that would come to $100 million in political cash each year...
...Past discussions of product liability reform and medical malpractice reform were framed by the plaintiff's bar, as a question of individual rights opposed by powerful corporations and rich doctors...
...But the choice approach reframes the issue to isolate trial lawyers and their self-interest...
...Third, the reform would reduce medical costs...
...In 1989, trial lawyer B.B...
...An added benefit of Horowitz/O'Connell is that, unlike product liability reform, where the benefits flow first to large companies and only by extension to consumers, the benefits of this measure flow directly to consumers, in the form of lower insurance premiums...
...And, win, lose, or draw, will conservatives emerge stronger and liberals weaker for having fought the battle...
...Consumer groups and representatives of lower income and minority communities have, supported for similar efforts in the past...
...To judge it against the Blackwell test: bringing consumer choice to automobile insurance—and its obvious parallel, health insurance—certainly unites the conservative coalition...
...The market mechanism of insurance-rate discounts for safer drivers and cars would eventually replace the politically driven regulatory system of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration...
...Trial lawyers put up $135,000 in an "independent expenditure" to attack Gingrich iii his 1992 primary...
...Second, reducing rates would make insurance affordable for many lower income drivers who are otherwise forced into "outlaw" status...
...Peter Huber, the author of Liability, who has done seminal work on the economic costs of the liability craze, has calculated the total "tort tax" on individuals, businesses, and government at more than $80 billion in direct costs alone (such as litigation costs and higher insurance premiums) and $300 billion in indirect costs (including defensive medicine and other efforts to protect against liability...
...Texas Republican activist Karl Rove identifies the trial lawyers as the "single largest source of campaign funds" for Governor Ann Richards and the state's Democratic Party...
...Juries often grant "pain and suffering" awards as a multiple of the plaintiff's medical expenses...
...First, it would make the roads safer, by eliminating perverse incentives...
...Which is why the next three years of statewide battles over auto-insurance reform will be national battles as well...
...T here are more than 700,000 lawyers in the United States—that's 70 percent of the world's lawyers for 5 percent of its population...
...A March 1993 poll of Alabamans found that 80 percent would be "more likely to vote against a candidate for the legislature or court who took large contributions from trial lawyers...
...Such expenses are thus encouraged by plaintiff lawyers who encourage clients to run up unnecessary and expensive medical bills as a way to increase their casefor lucrative "pain and suffering" awards (and not coincidentally to bring real value to the lawyer's 33-to-40-percent contingency fees...
...What's more, the American Tort Reform Association, a pro-reform body based in Washington, has done polling that could instruct candidates and consultants on how to turn the trial lawyers financial power against them...
...They do, it is true, have friends in the White House...
...Horowitz-O'Connellcould slash that by half...
...It also divides the liberal coalition...
...It would be an innovation with a number of positive consequences...
...In New Jersey, where advisers to . new governor Christine Todd Whitman are urging her to push the Horowitz/O'Connell choice proposal, savings to state residents would reach $1.3 billion a year if all drivers opted out of open-ended damages...
...Auto insurance can be reformed stateby-state, unlike product liability, where lawyers can "venue-shop," i.e., sue any given large company in whichever jurisdiction offers the most liberal civil judgments...
...just as important, its money is highly mobile, and can be used for quick political hits...
...T he latest conservative policy initiative to fit Blackwell's criteria is the drive for choice in the $100 billion automobile-insurance market...
...Economic conservatives welcome consumer sovereignty and contract law over legislative fiat, and social conservatives welcome the direct cost savings choice can mean for families...
...According to the Rand Corporation, motorists who opt out of the "pain and suffering" legal lottery would save about 33 percent of their present insurance costs...
...Ed Goeas, the president of the Tarrance Group (a Republican polling organization), points out that trial lawyers are effective on two 60 The American Spectator March 1994 levels...
...President Reagan's supply-side tax cuts certainly fit the Blackwell criteria, as did his military buildup...
...Lester Brickman of New York's Yeshiva University estimates that trial lawyers net more than $10 billion in income annually from contingency fees...
...Finally, it would reduce the destructive excesses of tort lawyers...
...The national average for doctor visits for neck or back injuries if no lawsuit is involved is between two and three...
...Where .previous reform efforts sought to forbid or limit lawsuits for difficult-to-quantify pain and suffering, this reform allows every consumer to choose to keep his present extensive coverage...
...The reason is simple: Bill and Hillary need the trial lawyers money—and need it so desperately that they cannot even feign moderation on tort reform, as they can on crime Or welfare...
...In 1990 and 1992, when the Democratic leadership wished to kneecap Newt Gingrich for exposing and driving from power Speaker Jim Wright, it turned to the trial lawyers and their most able lobbyist Ralph Nader...
...The system would be "first-party" insurance, under which insurers would reimburse their own policy-holders' automobile damage, hospital costs, lost wages, and so on...
...No longer would a "lottery" system of astronomical damages turn unsafe driving into a practice that is lucrative for certain parties...
...For the Clintons' health-care scheme not only fails to confront the abuses of medical malpractice—it would explicitly overturn progress won at the state level in recent years...
...Spence, who earned $2.5 million the previous year, told Forbes: "I probably give [Naderite groups] 5 percent of my income...
...The fight for school choice is a more recent prototype: It unites free market economists and traditional family values conservatives...
...An astute lawyer could sue either at the'point of purchase or in any of the states in which the offending company had a plant or a corporate headquarters...
...Auto insurance accounts for about half of these earnings...
...Seventy percent would be "more likely to vote against a candidate if he or she were endorsed by plaintiffs trial lawyers...
...Is it any surprise...
...Horowitz-O'Connell refocuses the question on the right ofeach consumer to contract for the protection he wants...
...But only 70,000 lawyers belong to the Association of Trial Lawyers of American (ATLA) and identify themselves as plaintiff attorneys...
...B ecause it changes the terms of debate, the Horowitz-O'Connell approach to insurance rates could succeed in addressing the problem of excessive civil damages where other attempts have failed...
...C1 The American Spectator March 1994 61...
...But unlike other professionals whose political involvement is limited to their PAC contribution, lawyers also give individually, in bundled groups of checks from lawyers or hidden as checks from spouses and relatives and through independent expenditures...
...ATLA's PAC gave $2.4 million to congressional candidates in the 1991-92 cycle...
...To date, the political cash of trial lawyers has stymied reform efforts at the state and federal level...
...By contrast, a 1992 Los Angeles study found that when lawsuits are involved the number of visits jumps to twenty-six...
...POLITICS %-.4rw 0/4 A Winning Drive by Grover G. Norquist M orton Blackwell, the Republican National Committeeman from Virginia, has long urged conservative activists and legislators to wage political battles that meet three tests: Will the issue in question unite the conservative coalition...
...In Washington, D.C., for example, one out of every four drivers is uninsured...
...Similar poll results were found in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas...
Vol. 27 • March 1994 • No. 3
