December 26, 2024

Overlawyered: Update: Texas lawyers raced to beat damages limit

… The equivalent of four years of medical liability lawsuits were dumped on Harris County courts in the first nine months of [last] year — prior to the effective date of the medical liability limits. This pattern of flooding the courts was repeated statewide. All of the cases have to be defended, and all are governed under the old law, which imposes no cap.”

But it’s not about the money, nooooo……

11 thoughts on “Texas Tort Reform, part 162

  1. Don’t be silly. There is now way that malpractice suddenly quadrupled in Texas. What happened here is trial lawyer fear that their golden goose would be cooked with the tort reform, so if they had any complaint, however thin, instead of researching it, they just filed the suit, to beat the time limits of the new law.

    And, I drive an ‘economy car”.

  2. This “malpractice rush” is well known in Texas. Unfortunately I suspect that many of these suits have no merit and would not have been filed anyway except that many lawyers have taken a “file first and investigate later” approach just to qualify for higher jury awards. After all, there is no penality for filing a suit without any merit that will be withdrawn later!

  3. “what?! you want doctors or insurance men to have to *gasp* drive economy cars, or something? ;)”

    Hey, if you want to make sure that doctors drive economy cars, all you have to do is decrease the qualifications. This way, anybody can be a doctor, and the rise in supply will precipitate a fall in unit price.

    There is one rather significant downside, though….

    what?! you want doctors and people cutting you open to remove cancer to have to *gasp* go through 8 years of post secondary education, and then years more of training making less than minimum wage, or something? ;)

  4. If it comes down to it, I would rather ride a motorcycle. I have one I will be forced to sell in order to pay down my wife’s education loans. As dangerous as they are, motorcycles are the only way to travel.

  5. motorcycles promote panty twisting.

    ahem.

    as it is, i am not going to have anyone cut me open, because i can’t afford the preventive care to catch the cancer to begin with.

    all my ideas on the medical establishment are that of a spectator. take that back… not a spectator… that would indicate i’m even in the stadium.

  6. “motorcycles promote panty twisting.”

    You say that as if it were a bad thing.
    I must be getting old, since I have no clue what that means. Is it the same as “getting one’s panties in a bind,” or is it some adolescent “panty-raid” thing?;)
    enlighten me; I am genuinely curious.

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