PrintDazed and confused
I find myself stunned by the magnitude of the quick victory President Bush has won on tort reform, with the new bill, now awaiting his signature federalizing most class action lawsuits. No longer will judges and juries in obscure rural counties of Illinois, Mississippi and Alabama be able to award hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to nebulous classes of supposedly injured consumers or shareholders, at the expense of productive corporations, on the thinnest of evidence. Instead , the federal judiciary, which used to be so beloved of the Democrats when it was intervening in Southern elections, will apply uniform rules to cases of national scope, under the supervision of judges who earned their place on the bench with Senate confirmation, whenever $5 million or more in damages is sought in a class action case.
Within the first month of his second term, this long—sought goal is accomplished by President Bush, with no heavy breathing, much less muscle strain. An epic battle is won with scarcely a casualty. The tort bar is vanquished. There are still more items to address in reducing the toll this vastly wealthy interest group exacts from the wealth—producing sector of the economy, but this is a major step forward.
Keep in mind that class action litigators, with their billions a year appropriated from wealth—producers, are a key element of the Democratic Party financial base. Nobody is going to be moving from Persian—carpeted suites in high rises into the poorhouse in the next few months, but the prospect of multi—billion dollar class action settlements replenishing the ample coffers of predatory law firms is diminished, which means that future "investments" in Democrat contributions will be less generous.
The end came quickly because the old means of obstructionism no longer work very well. Short of a Senate filibuster, the Democrats are unable to prevent legislation attacking obviously self—serving
