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Re: Voters Take Aim at Judges' Immunity From LawsuitsFrom: art fougner, md (evsono@pipeline.com)Thu Nov 17 14:50:57 2005
All Judges could take a lesson ... Trial lawyers get to know Jack Thursday, November 17, 2005 Copyright © 2005 Republican-American U.S. District Court Judge Janis Graham Jack is the heroine in one of the most egregious examples in recent times of greed and dishonesty in America's business sector. A federal prosecutor from New York was in Judge Jack's Texas courtroom when she described as "fraudulent" a law firm's attempt to cash in on thousands of bogus diagnoses of silicosis, a lung disease most often suffered by miners and manufacturing workers. Indictments and a sensational trial may follow, wrote Lester Brickman, a professor at Yeshiva University's law school, in a Nov. 5-6 Wall Street Journal op-ed. Attorneys who place public service over self-service still exist. As Thomas L. Brayton III of Waterbury put it in a letter to the editor last spring: "Lawyers are our friends and neighbors, and they are good, honest and honorable people." But no one can read Judge Jack's 249-page opinion without acquiring a far different perception. With Congress seemingly poised to take asbestos claims out of the tort system in favor of a government-managed fund, lawyers and their hired doctors settled on silicosis, a disease with similar symptoms and radiological indicators. Simply by asking the right questions, Judge Jack, a former nurse, found 6,000 alleged silicosis sufferers had filed claims previously for asbestosis. Judge Jack threw out 10,000 silicosis claims against 250 companies, characterizing them as products of "assembly line diagnosing. And it is an ingenious method of grossly inflating the number of positive diagnoses." She added, bluntly: "These diagnoses were manufactured for money." The lawyers apparently hoped no one would notice a National Institute for Occupational Safety report that said silicosis deaths declined sharply from 1968-2002. Moreover,silicosis and asbestosis symptoms are easily distinguished from each other, and both diseases rarely turn up in the same patient. But the evidence of fraud goes far deeper. Professor Brickman noted, "If the same level of discovery were permitted in asbestos suits, I have no doubt of the outcome. The same screening companies, X-ray readers and diagnosing doctors excoriated by Judge Jack have been involved in asbestos litigation for almost 20 years." The harm inflicted on society and on patients suffering from asbestosis is incalculable. Tens of thousands of Americans lost their jobs, countless investors lost their shirts and dozens of companies went out of business. The tort system has failed miserably in getting care to people suffering from asbestos-related disease. Judge Jack demonstrated her keen concern for patients by saying, "(S)ometimes the good is thrown in with the bad and it prevents people who really need to go forward with their case from being heard and getting their discovery. And that's why something like this is so crucial ... to lay to rest." What silicosis and asbestosis patients need is swift, reliable diagnosis and treatment. The best prescription for the disease of ethics and spirit afflicting the legal profession is a highly publicized trial that exposes the tort lawyers' self-enriching, job-destroying tactics so judges, prosecutors and honest lawyers finally can put a stop to it. http://www.rep-am.com/story.php?id=30354
At Thu, 17 Nov 2005, Garry E. Siegel, M.D. wrote:
>
-- art fougner, md
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