Cyrus Dugger

In The Lone Star State: Texan Civil Justice Is Lacking

Alex Winslow, Executive Director of Texas Watch, has an analysis of the negative effects of the tort “reform” movement’s recent successful legislation, as well as the general difficulties of accessing the courts and getting justice in Texas.

Our legal system is rigged. Texas families seeking their day in court are coming face-to-face with the reality that insurance companies dominate our courts and have run roughshod over our constitutional protections. Few cases are a better illustration of the difficult battle Texans face when they try to hold a wrongdoer accountable than that of Sharon Boyd. Boyd died in July of colon cancer that would have been easily preventable had her doctors ordered a standard colonoscopy. Instead of conducting this routine test, they told her that her symptoms were nothing to worry about and sent her home time and again.

Instead of taking responsibility for their inaction, the doctors hid behind a team of insurance industry lawyers who went to work stalling Boyd’s day in court. The lawyers working for her doctors’ insurance company said she should have known better than to rely on the advice of her three doctors because she was a nurse with a family history of colon cancer.

Amazingly, this tactic worked at the trial court level, but was overturned by a Fort Worth appeals court. Now, the insurance company lawyers have turned to their old allies at the Texas Supreme Court, where Boyd’s case languished for 19 long months before the court agreed to consider it. Now, there are questions about whether her death and the long delays she endured will allow those responsible for her death to escape responsibility.
Sadly, the outlook for Texas patients has become even bleaker since Boyd got lost in the system. Our constitutional rights were ravaged three years ago when Proposition 12, the insurance industry-backed amendment to our state’s Constitution, threw thousands of families out of the court system before they even had a chance to make their case.

There are untold numbers of Texans, like Boyd, being harmed today through preventable medical errors who will be victimized twice — once by a negligent doctor and again by a legal system stacked against them.
The insurance companies and medical industry claim that stripping our constitutional rights improves health care for Texas patients. Well, it has been three years since our legal rights were taken from us.
What are the results? Underserved areas remain underserved; Texas still has the highest rate of uninsured in the nation; and medical negligence continues to plague us.

To read full artilce, click here.

To read more about the problems created by tort “reform” in Texas, click here.

If you or your organization is interested in learning more about or working on these types of civil justice issues, please feel free to contact me at cdugger@drummajorinstitute.org.

Cyrus Dugger
Senior Fellow in Civil Justice
Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

Posted at 4:35 PM, Sep 13, 2006 in Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)