|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
Bush Wants New Congress to Curb LawsuitsFrom: art fougner, md (dean@thehuffpeople.net)Wed Dec 22 12:52:34 2004
.. December 15, 2004 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Wednesday he expects the new Congress to limit economy-damaging lawsuits by passing curbs on class action, asbestos injury and medical malpractice cases. "I intend to take a legislative package to Congress which says, we expect the House and Senate to pass meaningful liability reform on asbestos, on class action, and medical liability," Bush told a White House economic conference. The cost of litigation in America, Bush said, was making it more difficult to compete against other countries economically. Legal reform was a cornerstone of any good economic expansion program, he said. "I am passionate on this subject," he told a panel of legal experts in Washington. He said he would make it a "priority issue," starting with his State of the Union address to Congress early next year. "If we can achieve legal reform in America, it will make it a better place for people to either start a business and, or find work," the Republican president said. Legal reform has long been at the top of the legislative wish list of corporate America, which complains that runaway litigation is burdening U.S. businesses and needlessly bankrupting some of them. Republicans from Bush down sought legal reforms in the last Congress. The House of Representatives passed limits on medical malpractice claims as well as limits on class action suits, which allow plaintiffs to combine their claims into one lawsuit against a common defendant. But both efforts died in the Senate, which has a history of being a graveyard for such attempts. Bush's re-election and Republican gains in both chambers in the Nov. 2 elections have fueled business hopes that the chances of approving such legislation have also increased. But Republicans still have only 55 members in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to cut off debate and move to a vote -- a procedural hurdle that opponents could still try to use to block legislation. Senate Republicans struggled unsuccessfully earlier this year to bring to the floor a bill to end asbestos injury lawsuits and pay the claims from a national, privately-funded trust instead. The expected new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter, has revived talks on the asbestos fund and says he hopes to produce a bill early next year. Elsewhere in Washington, a legal reform group on Wednesday released its third annual list of "judicial hellholes" -- places it said were the worst in America for businesses to be sued because the courts generally favor local plaintiffs' lawyers against out-of-state defendants. For the second year in a row, Madison County, in southwest Illinois, won the top ranking. Huge verdicts and plaintiff-friendly rules there have drawn lawsuits from around the nation, and the number of asbestos injury claims and class action claims filed there have increased every year in recent years, the American Tort Reform Association said.
|
|
Return to
|
Mail a New Message to the Forum: ob-gyn-l@obgyn.net Forum Administrator: geffrey.klein@obgyn.net Report Technical Problems: webmaster@obgyn.net Last Updated: Tue Dec 2 04:44:50 2008 |
The American Medical Association is no longer designating CME hours for AMA Category II CME credit. However, physicians themselves may self designate learning activities as Category II CME credit hours if they feel it is of sufficient educational merit and meets the formal definitions of continuing medical education. OBGYN.net believes these interaction in this forum meets these criteria. For further information see the AMA web site.