re: #626 JamesWI

Granted, because I am a law student I may not be the most unbiased person here on the subject, but there have been plenty of studies on these supposedly exploding tort judgments. What most of them seem to find is that, with the possible exception of medical malpractice claims, tort judgments have not risen to anywhere near the levels the public believes it has. It simply is nowhere close to being as big a problem as many people see it.

Then why is there such an outcry? Because the media reports the ridiculous sounding verdicts like the McDonalds coffee case (but fails to make a big deal about when the judgment is reduced to a fraction of the original award, as it was there), and grandstanding politicians seize on that and get to rail against the out-of-control legal system.

I upding you but I question whether there has been an increase in med-mal cases. Civil Justice in Wisconsin: A Fact Book cites the following figure:

data kept by the Wisconsin Medical Mediation Panels showing those cases also dropped — by 34.2 percent between 1996 and 2007 — even though the state’s population and its number of doctors increased.

UW report: WMC claims of excessive litigation in state are bogus

The report is linked as a PDF in the article.