Cyrus Dugger

Pop Torts Series Vol. 3: The Phone Booth Man

After looking over Professors Haltom and McCann’s website, I found great quick summaries about some of the “pop torts” that are so often used as an advocacy tool by the tort “reform” movement.

In short, pop torts are “oversimplified moralistic characterizations of cases such as Stella Liebeck’s suit against McDonald’s” to push the tort “reform” agenda of limiting access to the courts.

I will write more about these “pop tort” cases in the future, but I just wanted to do a quick pop tort series with their material to give people a basic idea of this “pop torts” practice.

The tort “reform” movement typically tells these “pop tort” versions of real cases, but leaves out and distorts key aspects of the case to make them seem like crazy frivolous lawsuits when they are often very reasonable cases.

Here’s installment #3:

Mr. Charles Bigbee lost his leg when a drunk driver smashed into the phone booth in which Mr. Bigbee was trapped. He sued the telephone company for defects in the booth, defects that prevented Mr. Bigbee from escaping although he saw the careening car coming. That very booth had been hit by a car before, but the phone company had erected no impediment to cars speeding along a busy roadway. The case eventually settled. Mr. Bigbee testified before a congressional committee in an attempt to correct the record of his case, which President Reagan had publicized. Neither President Reagan nor his assistants would meet with Mr. Bigbee or correct the record. [See Ralph Nader and Wesley J. Smith, No Contest: Corporate Lawyers and the Perversion of Justice in America, pp. 273-274.] (link)

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 9:30 AM, Oct 11, 2006 in Pop Tort Series | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)