Here in Washington, there are two initiatives on next month's ballot attempting to address medical malpractice lawsuits.  I-330 is sponsored by doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies; I-336 is sponsored by lawyers.  (Note-Since the initiatives are basically in competition with each other, I've only linked to the pages in favor of each.)  In all honesty, I don't particularly like either measure, since each group has written their own measure tailored to their own interests.  The fact that they are running around trying to demonize each other just makes it worse.

I also think that the entire area of tort law needs some fixing, due in large part to abuse of the way things are structured right now.  This includes not only medical malpractice, but the rest of tort law as well.  And in all honesty, I think it could be fixed with only a couple of simple fixes.  So here they are:

-Loser pays.  This is the big one, in my opinion.  In most liability cases, the damages are paid, not by the liable party, but by the party's insurance company.  However, in all too many cases, the case is settled out of court, even in cases where the defendant would likely win, simply because winning a full trial would cost more than settling the case out of court.  The strategy for plaintiff's attorneys becomes simple:  if you can make a case expensive enough to defend, you win, even if your client isn't in the right.  To me this basically amounts to legalized extortion.  A good example of this is the settlement by Bushmaster in the D.C. sniper case.  If they had taken to case to trial, I'm pretty sure Bushmaster would have won.  But doing so would have exeeded the limits of their liability insurance policy, so they settled out of court.

As I see it, making the losing side pay the winner's legal bills would reduce lawsuit abuse in two ways:  first, it would increase defendants' willingness to take their cases to trial when they believe they're in the right, know that they won't be responsible for their legal bills.  If more of these cases go to trial and are decided in favor of the defendants, the number of suits that are filed simply in the hope of getting a paid out of court settlement will drop.  Second, it would reduce the willingness of plaintiff's attorney's to accept legally dubious cases where they are currently able to push defendants into settlements simply by making the case more expensive to fight than to settle.  Lawyers would definitely be less willing to take cases on a "I only get paid if you do" basis.  Granted, this might impair the ability of people of limited means to sue, while folks with large bank accounts will have no problem finding lawyers willing to tilt at windmills as long as the checks keep coming.  But since the trial attorneys are always proclaiming their faith in juries, I'll let them put their money where their well-paid mouths are.  If the case is a good one, a wronged party should be able to find a lawyer willing to take it.

-Punitive damage award limits.  Trial lawyers want no limits in this area.  People who get sued-doctors, big corporations want strict limits.  I'll propose a compromise.  Compensatory damages-medical treatment costs, lost wages, etc-as determined by an impartial third party, should, rightly have no limits.  Both sides actually agree on this.  So here's my proposal:  punitive damage awards may be equal to, but not exceed, any compensatory damage award.

Those are my thoughts.  Comments and suggestions appreciated.  Right now I'm just a soldier, but if this problem still exists if/when my Army career ends, it will be part of my platform should I decide to run for state government.