Alabama Jury Booty

...As of now, punitive damages have been reduced to $15 million and the mental toll is down to $4 million...

...At least a dozen insurance and finance companies have publicly announced that they won't be doing business anymore in Alabama," says Chris Grimshawe of the Alabama Civil Justice Reform Committee...

...tort costs rose by a factor of 400...

...After later adjustments, the award was entered at $83.5 million, the National Law Journal reports...

...Here's the way it works," Carr explains...

...How has this happened...

...It's a way to redistribute the wealth from those that have to those that have not...

...The American Spectator • April 19 9 6 37 was defeated by former Montgomery Circuit Judge Perry Hooper, Sr., at least in the first tally of votes...

...There is little hope for reform...

...A special session of the legislature, which ran into this year, failed to reinstitute punitive damage caps...

...Instead, they have sued, charging that the brief excursion through the pothole caused the wife to suffer severe depression and allegedly destroyed the couple's sex life...

...Not only can you get sued for wrongful death in Alabama, but wrongful birth as well...

...Defense attorneys such as Carr see a relationship between campaign contributions and the fine tuning of the legal system in favor of plaintiffs: "You can just get sued for so much more in Alabama than in other states," says Carr...

...He asked her what happened...

...Legal Times, February 15, 1993 0 ur virtue entrepreneurs have been busy firing their flare guns above various redoubts of sloth and corruption, including Washington, Welcome to the state that leads the world in generosity toward plaintiffs with stubbed toes and other corporate-induced ailments...

...Moreover, it was during Hornsby's tenure that the state supreme court declared caps on punitive damages in civil justice cases unconstitutional because, in the reasoning of the court, they interfered with the principle of trial by jury...

...Why all this money...

...There is nothing like Alabama in the history of the American legal system," says Yale law professor George Priest...

...Each side blames the other...

...There was the 1995 award of $3 million in compensatory damages and $12 million in punitive damages to Andrew Scott, who, at the age of two, was severely burned when gasoline ignited on the back porch of his home...

...Yet there is method in the madness...

...In a Jefferson County case, a battery distributor caught selling used batteries was hit for compensatory damages of $86,000 in July 1995...

...Pratt has no ears for the idea that even if a defense attorney were to drop his drawers in court, it would not justify $50 million worth of punishment for a $1,000 infraction...

...Asked if there is such a thing as an excessive verdict, he responds, "Of course—and they are struck down all the time...

...It's lawsuit lotto," Democratic State Senator George Clay told the Wall Street Journal...

...economic output (gross domestic product, or GDP) grew only one-hundredfold over the same period...

...How was the medical center at fault...

...A plaintiff who wrecked after encountering loose gravel was allowed to blame a "phantorn driver" whose "negligence" resulted in the gravel being on the road...

...Defense attorneys had hoped that 1987 reforms making it harder for plaintiffs to have their cases heard in the state's larger cities would change the legal environment...

...Alabama lawyers' portion of that was nearly $5.2 million...

...Yet the Mobile Press Register supplied some differing details: The chief of the volunteer fire department testified that immediately after the fire, he talked to a little girl who had seen the fire...

...A special legislative session, which ran into this year, failed to restore damage caps...

...Indeed, Alabama, often denounced as being slack in its cultural contributions (at least since the death of Bear Bryant), has recently rivaled California in the punitive damage sweepstakes —and has only one-fifth the population...

...The verdicts themselves, he says, are often the result of having discovered illicit corporate practices heretofore unknown...

...Yet it turned out that rural counties are at least as willing to whip the corporate Joes...

...The manufacturer of an air freshener that was intentionally used as an inhalant was held liable for an auto accident resulting from misuse of the product...

...Indeed, one couple recovered for emotional distress and the destruction of their sex lives after a faulty sonogram failed to detect birth defects that would have led to an abortion...

...The Alabama Civil Justice Reform Committee, using figures from the Federal Election Commission and state campaign reports, notes that in the years 1990-1994, plaintiff's lawyers in Alabama, California, and Texas contributed $17.3 million to political campaigns—which was more than either the Democratic or Republican national committee spent in all fifty states...

...was $600...

...ALABAMA JURY BOOTY The juror, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says that the jurors talked about awards between $100,000 and $8.5 million before arriving at the $10 million figure...

...Imagine what would happen to us if a cable snapped," he says...

...No matter...

...The result: $6 million in punitive damages, nearly $1 million in economic loss, and $700,000 for "mental anguish...

...In June 1995, General Motors was ordered by a jury to pay another minority dealer a full "There is nothing like Alabama in the history of the American legal system," says Yale law professor George Priest...

...While Grimshawe will not venture to guess how many companies may have decided to avoid locating in Alabama because of the legal climate, he points to a quotation by the executive director of the Jackson County Economic Development Authority as proof of corporate wariness: "We lost 450 jobs and a $37 million plant expansion to South Carolina due to a lawsuit that was later reversed on appeal...

...The automotive industry has suffered huge hits, especially in suits by minority franchise owners who asserted that, for example, Ford Motor Company's "Minority Dealer Program" committed fraud by failing to tell a minority dealer that he was more likely to fail than the "average" Ford dealer...

...In another case it was ruled that a man who killed himself by drinking excessively died an accidental death because, after all, his death was unexpected, which allowed his estate to collect insurance...

...The jury was living up to its reputation as a place where punitive damages are awarded ten times more often than in the average state...

...of Northbrook, Illinois, which inflated a loan to an Alabaman by $1,000...

...The little girl said he had matches...

...And look how hard it was to get him out...

...He has stopped modifying vans for the handicapped for the same reason...

...The rise in punitive damage awards affirmed by Alabama appellate courts is especially breathtaking...

...We didn't hear all the evidence...

...Small businesses complain that the legal environment breeds lawsuits, many of them frivolous, and almost all of them costly...

...and, in a case that helped Dr...

...Plaintiffs see the opportunity for phenomenal riches...

...BY DAVE SHIFLETT Hollywood, the universities, and even sports, but for the most part they have overlooked two other prime targets: the jury box and the plaintiff pool...

...Total jury awards have risen from just over $z million in 1990-91 to nearly $25.5 million in 1993-94...

...But one of Andrew's brothers said it was water and that he would show them...

...There were, for example, a Mississippi case targeting a Canadian funeral home company (jury verdict: $500 million) and two separate cases in Missouri against a French helicopter company...

...Big business, especially finance and insurance companies, are, by definition, out to screw the little guy...

...Alabama only had one case in the top 40 or so," says Pratt...

...Trial lawyers play down this development, but the numbers suggest otherwise...

...The Baptist Montclair Medical Center was hit by a Jefferson County jury for $1,1oo,000 in punitive damages after a woman with suicidal tendencies checked in the psychiatric ward and shot herself...

...What you have to understand is that no one is saying that $50 million worth of harm was done...

...Indeed, potential plaintiffs would have to be very dumb —along with fully blind and deaf—not to have picked up that Alabama juries can make them very rich, even for relatively small slights...

...Big business is also making adjustments...

...By contrast, U.S...

...And look how hard it was to get him out...

...I have studied jury verdicts for the past twenty years, and I believe the situation in Alabama is very close to being out of control," says Yale Law's George Priest...

...While no one would suggest sympathy for lawyers, it is permissible to acknowledge that playing the role of defense lawyer in an Alabama courtroom can be a thoroughly unpleasant experience...

...Yet an Alabama jury awarded Dr...

...He dismisses the notion that awarding $5o million in punitive damages over a loan inflated by $1,000 is necessarily excessive...

...Mental stress is now as common in Alabama as chiggers, though it can have more pleasant side effects, as discovered by a group of three Duck Head brand clothes salesmen who alleged that they had been deprived of sales commissions, causing great mental anguish — $7 million worth in the original jury verdict, which totaled $29 million...

...Drivers who struck permanent roadside markers have been allowed to sue the Highway Department employees who placed the signs...

...The county's per capita income is $9,515...

...In a Mobile County case, a butcher cut his hand on a saw he charged was defective...

...Other companies have curtailed the services they offer in order to avoid legal complications...

...As for the lawyers—well, they're only doing their job, which in some of the larger cases can result in hauling away half the settlement loot...

...The populist spirit appeared to be alive and well in a case in which Carr and his client, Life of Georgia, had their brains thoroughly beaten out...

...Yale's George Priest discovered that in Barbour County, 95.3 percent of all suits filed included a punitive action claim...

...the "victim" was thus found eligible for uninsured motorist coverage...

...She told her older sister the baby was playing in gas and they must go get their mother...

...A claim of mental distress was allowed in a case of termite damage to a plaintiff's home...

...Nor does he agree with the two other chief complaints made by tort reformers: That judges are in bed with trial lawyers, having been lured there with huge cash donations to their election campaigns, and that Alabama juries are full of vengeful populists all too eager to strip the hides off of rich businessmen, perhaps especially if they are from out of state...

...The lawyer stands before the jury and says 'Can you believe the way they treat us down here...

...But it is difficult getting Pratt to say just what an excessive verdict is...

...Alabama law says absentee ballots must either be notarized or witnessed by two people, but many of these were neither witnessed nor notarized...

...Look at the way punitive damage awards shot up between 1987 and 1994," says Carr...

...It is a system that is very close to being out of control...

...The other button is regional...

...We're trying to level the playing field against business, which spends more money in this state than trial lawyers by far...

...So agreed the lath Circuit Court of Appeals, which decided the ballots were no good and gave the decision to Hooper, who had run a reform campaign...

...The National Law Journal has just issued its roundup of significant jury verdicts from 1995 that indicates that Alabama's day in the sun may be over...

...Lewis Fuller, who runs a medical supply company in Gadsden, has stopped providing baby monitors that can signal the onset of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome...

...Don't forget that this is George Wallace country," says Carr, "and so there is a history of populism...

...in 1989-1993, $90 million...

...The result of all this, besides making for some very rich lawyers and plaintiffs and increasing business for mobile home dealers in places like Barbour County, is widespread fear in the business community as a whole...

...You and I weren't there...

...It had removed her clothes and given her a hospital gown...

...There clearly has been an increase in the past couple of years in some large awards, which have gotten a huge amount of publicity, and which have been parlayed into a 'crisis' situation...

...Most of these cases are settled out of court, often involving a payoff just to get the plaintiffs to go away...

...In one of these, a Kansas City jury awarded $70 million in compensatory damages and $5.92 million in prejudgment interest, which has been appealed...

...According to a survey by the Alabama Alliance, a coalition of business and industry representatives, lawyers were responsible for 81.2 percent of contributions in one supreme court justice race, for a total of $472,994...

...Fob James will be the key to reform: one critic, whose business with the state led him to request anonymity, complains that James is "surrounded by advisers so wrapped up with the trial lawyers that it's unbelievable...

...Indeed, Alabama juries teach lessons as if there were no tomorrow...

...Thirty-three percent of the homes are led by single parents, and 44 percent of the residents lack a high school degree...

...Punitive damages: $300,000...

...The number of lawsuits filed in the county, usually against finance and insurance companies, has increased fourfold since 1990...

...38 April 19 9 6 • The American Spectator he had overheard his supervisor saying that he wouldn't hire a black or a woman...

...economy over the past 64 years...

...Survival," says Pratt...

...And attorneys from other states can't believe what judges allow juries to hear...

...The courts also found that a landlord can be liable for the rape of a tenant because he failed to maintain his property...

...This was, of course, a terrible accident, which his lawyers blamed on a hot-water heater in an adjacent room that, they said, had touched off the gas fumes...

...In this 1994 case, the jury decided that the firm had made troubling responses during discovery about other cases and awarded the victim $654,784 in compensatory damages and $22,750,000 in punitive damages...

...His medical costs were $12,000...

...Juries, flexing the populist muscle, exercise their right to teach large corporations that you don't mess around with Alabamans (P...

...The accounting firm of Tillinghast Towers Perrin says this part of our system cost $152 billion in 1994—two-and-a-half times the industrialized world's average...

...In short, it's relatively easy to sue in Alabama...

...Sometimes you just can't do enough to protect yourself...

...Gore rake in his millions, it was ruled that admission of evidence of other alleged bad acts can be used as a punitive multiplier against a defendant...

...You can't sit in Washington and say that," he counsels...

...Gore $4,000 in economic damages and $4 million in punitive damages, later reduced to $2 million by the state supreme court...

...Apparently he is right...

...Yet the state supreme court said there was 'substantial compliance' with election law to allow the ballots...

...The American Spectator • April 1996 35 What is especially interesting about this hot spot is that, unlike Hollywood, Washington et al., it is heavily populated by non-elitists—indeed, the salt of the earth—who have nonetheless helped make the American tort system second to none in the industrialized world...

...I would have been happy to pay for any automotive damages," he said, yet that wasn't what the couple was after...

...We don't know what documents might have been uncovered...

...Later, when alone, the troubled woman removed a small pistol from a "body cavity" and did herself in...

...Who, save for some self-interested lawyers, would deny that Americans are lawsuit crazy, and that juries are increasingly willing to lavishly reward that impulse...

...This is especially true because the audience the lawyer plays to—the jury—seems to come with two prominent hot buttons, neither of which is helpful to the defense attorney's cause...

...The American Spectator • April 1996 39...

...36 April 1996 • The American Spectator $20 million in punitive damages and an additional $3 million for mental stress for the same reasons...

...Punitive damages: $5oo,000...

...The "reasonable reliance" standard in fraud cases was replaced in 1991 by a "justifiable reliance standard," which in effect said that oral misrepresentations in a contract, even though contradicted by the written contract, are actionable...

...they have struck down a ten-year statute of limitation for commencement of product liability actions, and have ruled that punitive damages, while not being "disproportionate" to actual damages, need not bear any close relationship...

...Hornsby Juries, flexing the populist muscle, exercise their right to teach corporations you don't mess around with Alabamans...

...This is unbelievable," he says...

...America got a sense of Alabama rules when Dr...

...in 1984-1988, $35 million...

...This was the amount of money the jurors decided would convince the company not to do this again...

...The plaintiff was both a black and a woman...

...that the wealth of the defendant is an issue in all punitive damage cases...

...Jim Pratt, the personable vice president of the Alabama Trial Lawyers Association, admits that Alabama is suffering a perception problem, but nothing more than that...

...An appeal is pending...

...Bars can be held responsible when their patrons injure others in car accidents...

...Then there was the extraordinary election of 1994, in which five supreme court seats were contested...

...Don Morgan, a Cullman businessman, was sued after a couple drove through a pothole on one of Morgan's properties, which apparently flattened a tire and knocked the front end out of alignment...

...In most places, punitive damages are awarded for collisions, potholes, and falls...

...The company surely did deserve a kick in the pants, but probably not of the dimensions administered: The jury awarded the victim $250,000 in compensatory damages and $15 million in punitive damages...

...That evidence, however, wasn't allowed," Carr complains...

...She said she had found the baby [Andrew] playing in a puddle of gasoline...

...It should have done more...

...There is little hope for structural reform...

...Who would deny that some very regrettable human traits are sometimes on full display in this area, including malingering, greed, truth shaving, regional prejudice, and vengeance...

...They gave him money, then turned around and said that election officials could count those ballots because there was 'substantial compliance.' It was unbelievable...

...Judges, who are often elected with the help of plaintiff bar contributions, are often happy to accommodate this expression of populist outrage...

...Alabama judges are elected, including those who sit on the state supreme court, and therefore they depend on the generosity of campaign contributors in order first to attain, and then to retain, their judgeships...

...After a while," he says, "juries come to believe that it's entirely appropriate to have huge punitive damages in cases where there is little harm done...

...Puffing" — claiming that one insurance policy is better than another—can constitute fraud...

...But this is more a matter of perception rather than reality...

...How can we convince companies to build or locate in our state and provide our citizens with jobs when we are battling this kind of situation...

...Between 1930 and 1994," the firm added, "U.S...

...Priest adds that many of the cases that have resulted in substantial awards "would have been settled elsewhere for much smaller amounts, or would not have gotten to court at all...

...According to Davis Carr, a Mobile defense attorney and tort reform activist, the reign of Sonny Hornsby, the former head of Alabama's trial lawyers' association who was elected chief justice of the state's supreme court in 1987, clearly established the link between judges and plaintiff's attorneys...

...Thus, tort costs have grown almost four times faster than the U.S...

...We didn't see if the defense attorneys were arrogant...

...A pledge at another fraternity complained of being beaten during hazing...

...J. Buchanan may see some opportunity here...

...But Jim Pratt takes a wider view that, if not comforting, at least is reassuring to Alabamans who worry that the state's reputation as "tort hell" will drive businesses elsewhere...

...They're raping, plundering, and pillaging, and we can't let them get away with that.' This is a constant theme in every case against a northern company, or, for that matter, any company headquartered outside the state...

...There are clues to be found in Alabama, which, until very recently at least, has been a national leader in huge jury verdicts, some reasonable but many without any relation to actual damages...

...I don't think anyone knows how to deal with this...

...in 1994, over $200 million...

...A bouncer punched a visitor to a fraternity party at Pi Kappa Phi at the University of South Alabama in the face...

...The court's ruling was widely seen as an outrage: "Four of the justices who ruled for allowing the ballots had put campaign money into Hornsby's pocket," Carr says...

...In order to discourage the firm from repeating its sins, the jury tacked on another $10 million in punitive damages...

...The cost of the refinishing job Dave Shiflett is a writer living in Virginia and a frequent contributor to The American Spectator...

...The paper also pointed out that another volunteer firefighter testified under oath that one of Andrew's brothers admitted playing with matches, adding that he had discovered a half-opened box of kitchen matches on the porch "and one burnt match laying there, right where the fire took place...

...Nor is it likely that Republican Gov...

...in 1979-1983, $4.2 million...

...Citizens in Barbour County have recognized lawsuits as an industry, and a much needed one...

...Decision: Hornsby...

...The first button is anti-capitalist populism...

...What was allowed was a claim by a disgruntled former employee that "Look at the way punitive damage awards shot up between 1987 and 1994...

...In the second trial, another Kansas City jury awarded S35o million, including $175 million in punitive damages...

...Alabama's courts have allowed recovery for purely emotional damages and for mental distress without proof of physical injury...

...One accident could cause us to shut down...

...Some whacking was in order, but $50 million in punitive damages seems a bit much (the award was later reduced to $2 million, which is still a resounding whack considering the small amount of harm done...

...Yet suddenly, Carr says, "There appeared a batch of absentee ballots that put the decision in Hornsby's favor, even though these ballots carried an unpleasant odor about them...

...The company was accused of selling an elderly woman an insurance policy she didn't need, despite the company's assertion that she had made claims on the policy...

...Quite honestly, I think it had something to do with sounding like a round figure," this juror says...

...Ira Gore, a local physician, sued BMW after discovering that his car had been slightly refinished because of acid rain damage received during its shipment from Germany...

...At that point in his interview, the little girl's mother told her to shut up...

...For 1974-1978, the total was $410,000...

...Insurance companies — especially allegedly overzealous agents —are a favorite target, with punitive damages for fraud sometimes reaching $25 million, though that is only half the size of the punitive damages award against Mercury Finance Co...

...yale's George Priest blames the punitive explosion, in part at least, on a hesitancy by judges to strike down large settlements...

...Indeed, the most infamous symbol of Alabama's love of lawsuits is Barbour County, whose most notable product until recently was George Wallace...

...Though that case bewildered America, it was not all that remarkable by Alabama standards...

...And that one was for S3.5 million...