Andrew Cohen wrote an article about the disastrous Metrolink train crash in the recent Atlantic magazine. It is entitled "The Real Victims of 'Tort Reform'." The point of it is that the arbitrary caps that limit damages in major railway negligence cases have not served the victims of the crash very well.
No more than $200,000,000 can be paid for any one incident. In this accident, which was apparently caused by a texting train engineer, 24 people died, and more than 100 were injured. Many of the injuries will limit the quality of victims' lives for the remainder of their lives, and the money set aside for the carnage experienced by the victims, living and dead, will never be enough, according to Judge Peter Lichtman's decision regarding the damages. In fact, the Judge was so disturbed by the task of having to divide up a woefully inadequate sum of money that he invoked a recent popular movie, saying that he was being forced to make a "Sophie's Choice," essentially taking from one deserving victim to give to another.
It does not take a genius to comprehend that Judge Lichtman was horrified by the cap on damages that had been voted into life courtesy of the tort "reform" movement-- a lobby funded by corporate America, and particularly by Big Tobacco & Big Pharma--that seeks to limit, or eliminate entirely, accountability for big business when individuals are injured or killed due to its negligence.
Not surprisingly, The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank that views Dick Cheney with an unaturally high regard, had something to say about Mr. Cohen's piece. And as is often the case with its writers, the facts became a casualty fast. Ted Frank would have you believe that it was Andrew Cohen himself who used the term, "Sophie's Choice," and faults him for introducing Nazi themes, especially since Cohen is a fellow "landsman," (or Jew, in Yiddish). However, as Cohen made clear from the beginning, and as I wrote above, it was the judge doling out the inadequate funds who used those words. And Frank's riffs on the Nazi imagery, and his outrage that it comes from another Jew, are straight out of the Al Sharpton handbook--particularly the Tawana Brawley chapter. Frank's fiction will serve to distract some readers from the tort "reformers" humanity-challenged agenda, and the public airing of its effects that Judge Lichtman and Cohen have provided. But most of us won't be fooled.
After all, this is from a writer who expresses sympathy for the poor, texting train engineer who caused all the carnage in the first place. Don't believe me? Read his post. The engineer "paid the price with his own life when he collided with a freight train." What "price" are we talking about here? Does Frank's "price" include 24 dead, 100 injured, scores of ruined lives and careers? Somehow those details seem to have drifted off his radar.
Otherwise, Frank regurgitates the standard conservative saws: It's all about the greedy trial lawyers; Cohen has no basis to rail against all tort reform; and tort reform is good for business. Nice.
And good to see that the business of spin, distortion and denial is still alive and well. Someone's got to spin the wheels of commerce.
