Talk:Tort reform in the United States/Archive 1

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Please add new archivals to Talk:Tort reform/Archive02. (See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.) Thank you. FRCP11 15:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

message: Reading through the contentious exchanges below, I finally realized what has kept gnawing at me: This article is not a collaborative effort to inform some unspecified and unidentified audience about tort reform. Indeed, the audience is the "forgotten man" in all this ruckus. This article is just one more arena for carrying on the tort reform debate. I am all for engaging in that debate, but not in the guise of a collaborative effort at consensus. Adios, amigos. PPE 01:30, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: I see the light

message: I think it is unwise to list specific cases such as the Zimmerman and Price cases.  Specific cases almost always involve complexities that can be argued in a variety of ways at great length.  That is what trials are for.  Necessarily, any examples lead to ommissions of key facts and skewing of claims in one direction or the other, even if unintentionally.
--Whitfield Larrabee 14:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Given that the tort reform complaint is that trials are coming to the wrong results, the argument that a trial should be dispositive of the question seems specious.  I don't see any evidence that Price or Zimmer were characterized incorrectly.  In Zimmer, in particular, the jury found 1% liability, and joint and several liability law held the city guilty 100%, which is precisely the point.  It's possible the joint and several liability debate should be moved to that article. -- FRCP11 15:24, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Are you disputing that a defendant held jointly and severally liable and 1% responsible will be assessed 100% of the damages?  That's the entire point.  There are several other famous examples if you don't like Zimmer; I found a better one, which I'll use.  But there are millions of trial lawyers with an incentive to catch ATRA telling a lie, so I'd be surprised if ATRA told a lie and no one noticed; ATRA has every incentive to be especially careful so that it doesn't lose credibility.  Your accusation is unmerited.  I also note that you're projecting.  Need I remind you that you were the one who unthinkingly copied an anti-tort-reform site's out-of-context misquotation of Graham that I had to clean up? -- FRCP11 01:06, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ad hominem attacks on another editor as being "unethical" and "unthinking" strike me as excessive in this context. --Whitfield Larrabee 01:00, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: True or false?  You took a single sentence from a Graham study out of context, and falsely claimed that it opposed tort reform.  That's not ad hominem; it's an accurate recitation of the facts.  "Unthinking" is the most charitable interpretation of that; the alternative is that you were deliberately dishonest.  I didn't use the term "unethical"--you did, and you have some nerve complaining about ad hominem attacks when you've blanketed this talk page with attacks on me. -- FRCP11 02:30, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Use of Specific Cases

message: In another objectionable section, the following quote appears:
"For example, in a case now on appeal, an Illinois judge awarded US$10.1 billion against Philip Morris over cigarette advertising on behalf of a class of plaintiffs that excluded those who had suffered physical injury for smoking. "
The problem with this statement is that it doesn't explain in any detail the basis for the lawsuit, why the plaintiff's contended that they were entitled to this award, or even why the judgment should not have awarded this amount.  The use of misleading, vague, lacking in citation and one sided examples does not lend to a good article although it may make for a good editorial.  It is interesting that the quoted section make no reference to the name of the case, the case citation, the date, etc, so we have no means by which to look into the matter to clarify the meaning of the example or to check whether it is true.  
Although I have no objection to a balanced description of this case, if it even exists, in its current form I am just deleting this example.Whitfield Larrabee 03:26, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia does not approve of this kind of editing by intimidation.  Our standard is, instead, that editors should cite sources.  I've read some things about the Price case, and my understanding was that plaintiffs' theory of recovery didn't depend on physical injury, but that's completely different from saying that the class excluded those who'd suffered such injury.  You should add a citation for, at least, that point, bearing in mind that a citation to an advocacy site like overlawyered.com must be carefully assessed. JamesMLane 22:15, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've taken it back out. -- FRCP11 14:08, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Price v. Philip Morris

message: Well, now I've gone and done it again. I still get this sense that the articles may need a bit of checking; it's certainly come a long way from the "heavily disputed by many" days. I've done some editing, but I feel that this tag fits the situation well. Umm... that's about it for now. Deltabeignet 01:40, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV check 

message: I note that there is a claim in the article that federal reform efforts have been modified to permit the repeal of federal caps by state governments.  There is then a link provided to a web site.  The link does not substantiate this claim.  There are also numberous links to web sites of CALA and ATRA.  These to groups are clearly corporate front groups. With so many links to their web sites, it seems that someone wants to skew the article by having links to these groups more prominently featured than other groups opposed to the "tort reform" agenda.  I note that when I posted a link in the reference section to an alternative viewpoint, it was deleted.
--Whitfield Larrabee 00:29, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "Regulation through litigation" is a major objection to the current litigation system among tort reformers, and it goes beyond the gun-control issue, which was cited as an example.  Litigation has been a prominent strategy of the Brady Center and other gun-control organizations.  The "weapons industry" is a different animal than the "handgun industry."  I've restored the text, and toned it down.  FRCP11 20:10, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: POV tag

message: Today I made several revisions to the article, including providing a link to the Court decision cited as an example in the case, providing a link to a relevant article used as reference, providing counterbalancing views to view points presented in the article, and adding detailed information about the class action lawsuit cited in the article.
Obviously, providing links to the case which I didn't even cite is not point of view.  Simply reverting the article to the way that the editor, FRCP11 liked it before, doesn't seem to be an appropriate remedy.  It simply retains imbalances in the article that pre-existed the revision.
Whitfield Larrabee 19:09, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You made several separate revisions that were disorganized, had several misspellings(e.g., "ciggarettes"), several style errors, and several uncited claims that are simply false.  For example, it is not true that "all fifty states" bar the use of junk science, especially at the time John Edwards was trying his cerebral palsy cases.  The Daubert discussion didn't belong in the paragraph about politics.  Marbury v. Madison has nothing to do with the question of the balance between federal and state courts.  You added a cite to an article that had nothing to do with the topic.  Finally, the article already had a link to the Court decision in Price v. Philip Morris, and you simply deleted that one and added another one using the wrong style.  I reverted rather than try to pick through the sloppy edits for the stuff that belonged.  Try to control your rage when you're editing.  FRCP11 22:10, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to be your contention that some states permitted "junk science."  I am not familiar with any such state court ruling at any time.  I provided a link to support the contention that all states bar the use of junk science.  I have searched in vain for the link to the court's judgment in Price v. Phillips Morris.  Accordingly, I will restore the link to the Phillip Morris case and try to address some of your concerns.
Whitfield Larrabee 23:35, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: One link to the Philip Morris case is plenty. I don't know why you insist on inserting a second link, especially when that second link is a pdf instead of html.  I also don't know why you insist putting things in that aren't true, like the claim that "all medical malpractice is state law."  See, e.g., the Federal Tort Claims Act.  In addition, please observe the style rules for the talk section.  It's not polite to put your comments at the top or to fail to indent appropriately.  FRCP11 00:58, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverting Article To Former State 

message: I meant to write "remove redundancy" and inadvertently wrote "remove vandalism" in my description of an edit fixing yet another time that Whitfield Larrabee placed the same thing in an article twice.  I didn't mean to accuse him of not acting in good faith, but the carelessness in his edits is really getting to be annoying.  FRCP11 20:05, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apology