Awesome Video Shows Who The Real “Mr. Fancy Pants” Is

Kia Franklin

Awesome Video Shows Who The Real “Mr. Fancy Pants” Is

The fat cats funding the dissemination of tort “reform” propaganda.

“The costs of the legal system are created by those who cause injury, not those injured through no fault of their own. Today Americans need more protection from those who cause injurues; they need more remedies through the court system, not fewer.”—The Injury Board, Mr. Fancy Pants Video

Created by the Injury Board, it’s about 8 minutes long and is really interesting. The first 4 minutes go into the origins of the “tort reform program” media campaign, sponsored in large part by big tobacco and the Chamber of Commerce. The last 4 minutes debunks some fallacies about the prevalence of frivolous lawsuits and explores skewed media attention to the bad cases.

Most telling to me were the interviews with citizens passing by on the sidewalk who were asked for their opinions on trial lawyers and whether they think our country has a lawsuit problem. The interviews confirm that what shapes public opinion about civil justice issues is the media. Where mainstream media is either misinformed about the complexity of a lawsuit (i.e. the McDonald’s case) or where its coverage of one bad lawsuit is overblown (like the judge/pants case), the result is that the public is misinformed. Thank goodness for independent media and for opportunities to have public conversations about these pressing issues online.

Posted at 12:07 PM, Jul 18, 2007 in Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Kia: I buy it. Torts are great.

I want you to be the first lawyer to explain why torts are so great, but lawyers and judges have dealt themselves total immunity from any accountability for the severe injuries they have inflicted on innocent adverse third parties by their lawyer carelessness. Why are juries not good enough to regulate the lawyer?

Supremacy Claus, what do you mean "torts are so great"? Lets start with a simple definition..a tort is nothing more then the breach of a contract. You would agree that contracts are good and that when 2 people enter into a contract that they should live up to their agreement. If one of the parties disregards his promise then the other party should be able to go into court in order to get compensated for his losses due to the contract being broken. Well a tort is not an explicit contract between 2 people but instead is an implicit contract between 2 people to treat one another reasonably. When one party (tortfeasor) disregards that contract, and that disregard causes injuries to another, (victim) then the law compensates the victim for his injuries.

Lets look at a real world example....a truck driver is overly tired because the night before he stayed up really late to watch the late late late show knowing that the next morning he would need to drive his 18 wheeler filled with gasoline from one town to the bordering town. While traveling to the next town the truck driver falls asleep at the wheel, crashes across the center median and head-on into an unsuspecting motorist causing 1st degree burns over 70% of her body. In this example the truck driver had a contract with every other motorist that he would drive his truck in a safe fashion (which obviously includes not driving in a sleep deprived state) and he breached that contract by knowingly getting behind the wheel without sufficient sleep. That breach caused injuries which in this example were catastrophic.

So do I think torts are a good thing?? Hell no. But I do believe that the person who breached that implicit contract, that we all as human beings are parties to, must be held accountable. The breacher (tortfeasor) should not be arbitrarily limited in the amount that he owes. He should be forced to pay for all of the damages that he caused by his disregard of the rights of the innocent victim. Just because occasionally someone must defend a frivolous lawsuit is not a basis to limit the vast amount of legitimate claims no less then the occasional prosecution of an innocent man shouldn't be the basis of curtailing the powers of the state to prosecute criminals. Do you get it now SC?