Orange County Register

We wrote recently about a report released by California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse,  showing that handful of local governments in California spent more than a half-billion dollars dealing with lawsuits over a two-year period (including $14.2 million by the good County of Orange, and $4.4 million by the city of Anaheim).

The point, according to California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, is that greedy people try to pick government’s deep pockets, and that hurts the rest of us.

Now, CCALA calls itself “a nonpartisan grassroots movement of concerned citizens and businesses who are fighting against lawsuit abuse in California,” and we quoted that - with quote marks and everything! - in our story. Newport Beach attorney Christopher E. Russell objected most vociferously to that characterization - saying that CCALA is, in fact, “an organization devoted to shutting the courthouse doors to normal people in favor of big business.”

So we visited a report by the Center for Justice & Democracy and Public Citizen from 2000, which found that CALAs “are part of a national, corporate-backed network of front groups that receive substantial financial and strategic assistance from the tobacco industry and some of America’s biggest corporations,” and that they ”aim to incite public scorn for the civil justice system, juries and judges, and to pave the way for enactment of laws immunizing corporations from liability for actions that harm consumers.”

We do not have access to CALA’s donor list to say yay or nay. But beyond the political end game, we still believe that the figures in CCALA’s report are worth digesting; the attorneys representing your local cities, school and special districts will be the first to mumble about the absurdity of many of the legal claims filed against their agencies. (A quick review finds a man threatening to sue over a raccoon bite, a student asking for $200,000 after being hit with a clipboard, and a woman wanting more than $30,000 after tripping on a sidewalk while rollerblading – which she said would increase her risk of breast cancer).

CALA calls for greater disclosure, more public oversight and “adoption of aggressive risk management procedures to protect our local government coffers from the greedy hands of plaintiffs’ attorneys.” That last bit may be a bit over the top, but the rest of it still sounds pretty sensible to us.

Read the entirety of Mr. Russell’s irate email to us below.

Dear Ms. Sforza:You do your readers a significant disservice when you legitimize the
“California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse” by calling them a “a non
partisan grass roots organization” (basically reading from their web
site) when, in fact, it is an organization devoted to shutting the
courthouse doors to normal people in favor of big business. The
“grassroots” part is really laughable in light of the fact that they are
funded by the Tobacco Industry, the Chamber of Commerce, the Insurance
Industry and other Big Business interests that would prefer all
attorneys quietly go away so they can make their billions in profits
without those pesky old lawsuits involving consumers
injured/killed/maimed by their actions, ruining their bottom line.
Please Google “California Citizens of Lawsuit Abuse fake grassroots”.
You will come across a website that explains the charade. Any minimal
surfing on the web will lead you to other web sites that shine further
light on this front group for Big Business.

Attorneys are easy targets in large part to the propaganda of the above
interests. These groups are the ones with all of the money, however,
and they can afford to repeat the lies loud enough and long enough to
where the lies become truth in the minds of the public. Most of the
public has never had an unfavorable encounter with an attorney and nor
have they ever been on the wrong end of a “frivolous” lawsuit but yet
most of the public have a bad perception of attorneys who pursue
personal injury claims. How do you explain that disconnect?

The propaganda works. Most jurors are now predisposed to believing that
most personal injury lawsuits are “frivolous”. As a result, more
defense verdicts and smaller verdicts are returned, which benefits who?
Yes, you guessed it, the folks funding the “grassroots” Citizens Against
Lawsuit Abuse. And by the way, what legitimate attorney in his/her
right mind would take on a “frivolous” lawsuit on a contingency with the
end result being he/she does not get paid when the matter ends up being
dismissed or a defense verdict is returned? That is the fastest way to
go out of business, taking in poor claims, if you are a trial attorney.

If you really want to do your readers a service you will expose the
“Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse” for what it really is, which is a front
for Big Business, the same Big Business that almost took down our
financial system last year but yet does not want to be held accountable
at all for its actions. Closing the court house doors to consumers is
just another way of not being held accountable.

If you really want to see the disastrous effects of “tort reform” which
is the main goal of Big Business “front” groups like the Citizens
Against Lawsuit Abuse you need look to look no further than the medical
malpractice tort reform act here in California called MICRA. That law
caps medical malpractice damages at $250,000. So in other words, a
medical provider can kill your child or your aging parent and the most
his/her life is worth is $250,000. In light of the fact that according
to the New England Journal of Medicine Report 98,000 people are killed
by mistakes in our hospitals on a yearly basis, such a scenario happens
all too often.

The dirty little secret is, however, the insurance companies never pay
$250,000 since 1. most good attorneys will not take these cases because
it usually entails spending over $50,000 just to get to trial and 2. why
would a carrier pay the entire $250,000 when the most they could get hit
at trial would be $250,000? (My 75 yr old aunt was forced to accept
$175,000 for the death of her husband of 50 yrs who died of suffocation
in a dental chair. The risk of going to trial and spending $50,000 was
too great and she was a beaten woman who lost her best friend of 50 yrs.
In addition, she could not emotionally continue to keep fighting the
good fight, which is what the carriers bank on as well.) With an 80%
chance of the medical provider prevailing at trial (the most recent
statistics) why not take a chance on a jury liking your doctor
regardless of his/her negligent actions? In the meantime the medical
malpractice insurance companies are laughing all the way to the bank and
laughing at our system of “justice”
that denies justice to almost all victims of medical malpractice here in
California.

I could go but I don’t want to take any more of your time. Suffice it
to say, if you are a “Watchdog” for the consumer, accepting the word of
fake and phony organizations such as California Citizens Against Lawsuit
Abuse as to anything to do with lawsuits or how our civil justice system
operates, is akin to allowing the wolf to decide when and where the
sheep can graze.

Thank you for your time.
Christopher E. Russell, Esq.

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