GOP Senator Slams Lawsuit-Happy Culture
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
April 15, 2003

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPrint.asp?Page=\Politics\archive\200304\POL20030415a.html

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) – A U.S. senator is calling on Americans to reject the “culture of victimhood” and instead embrace “personal responsibility” in rejecting the trend toward class action lawsuits against politically unpopular companies like tobacco and gun manufacturers.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared that the recent spate of lawsuits against tobacco and gun manufacturers and “big fast food” companies is creating an America of “regulation by litigation.”

The class action lawsuits are circumventing the legislative process and subverting the democratic process, according to McConnell. He was the keynote speaker at a recent Capitol Hill seminar sponsored by the Free Congress Foundation entitled “Restoring Responsibility: Litigation, Victimization and the Corruption of Culture.”

A spokesman for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) rejected the criticism of class action lawsuits.

“The system works,” said Carlton Carl, the director of media relations for the group.

Carl accused McConnell and others in elected office of trying “to provide special protections to corporations that injure American families either physically or financially.”

However, according to McConnell, the new lawsuit culture is creating an America where “people believe that lawyers and judges should take it upon themselves to substitute their policy preferences for those whom the citizenry elected to make policy,” McConnell explained.

Despite recent litigation in which overweight people sued fast food companies, blaming their obesity on the fast food, McConnell insisted: “No branch of government should mandate that Burger King and McDonald’s carry veggie burgers for portly patrons.”

A change in American culture is needed instead, according to McConnell.

“We need to change people’s attitudes so they are less likely to feel they should “sue first and ask questions later,” he said.

Borrowing a phrase from the Clinton administration, McConnell said: “The era of big government may be over, but the era of regulation through litigation has just begun.”

‘Constitution Be Damned’

William Marshner, a professor of theology at Christendom College in Front Royal, Va., warned that “nobody’s property is safe” as long as the outbreak of class action lawsuits continues unchecked.

“We are being ruled by decisions in which the Constitution be damned,” Marshner said.

Marshner believes the concept of “situational ethics” is the motivating factor behind the lawsuits.

“If stealing somebody’s else’s money can become morally correct just because you are in a situation where you are hurting…then it is profoundly in your interest to maintain that you are in victim status because that becomes the situation-defining criteria,” Marshner explained.

“Once you are a victim, you’re collecting wealth from other people. Whether they were negligent or not, it becomes morally good,” Marshner added.

“Situational ethics” have replaced “traditional morality” and shifted responsibility and accountability to the person who has “deep pockets,” Marshner claimed.

“You have no incentive to reflect upon the fact that your difficulties may not be anybody’s fault. Deep pockets in connection to me becomes what matters,” he said.

Money ‘Does Not Go to the Victims’

Kevin McGuiness of the Asbestos Study Group, representing asbestos manufacturers and end users, believes class action lawsuits against asbestos-related companies are enriching only the lawyers.

“Between 60 and 70 percent of all the money going to asbestos litigation does not go to the victims, it goes to the lawyers on both sides,” McGuiness said.

Those trial lawyers, according to McGuiness, are also unfairly targeting many companies.

McGuiness cited one company, facing tens of thousands of asbestos-related claims that did not even make, buy, install, use or insure asbestos.

“What was [the company's] mistake? In the 1920s and ’30s, they wrote reports analyzing asbestos and determined that asbestos might cause some health risks,” he explained.

“Their mistake, according to the trial lawyers, was they did not tell enough people about their findings,” McGuiness said.

The same company, which McGuiness declined to identify, decided to fight one of the lawsuits, winning “a complete and utter victory” in the courts at a cost of $2 million, McGuiness said. The firm has since decided to settle the “tens of thousands of similar suits” because it cannot afford to battle in the courts, he added.

“So [the company] is now in the process of paying off, and there is no more apt term, a couple thousand claimants to get rid of these suits,” according to McGuiness, adding that the mere announcement of a class action lawsuit against any company could be financially devastating to that company.

“When companies have seen lawsuits filed against them, their assets have been diminished by 30 to 40 percent overnight, simply by the filing of the suit,” McGuiness explained. Even if the company is confident it is not responsible for what the lawsuit alleges, “the fear of the cost of that suit” will scare investors and insurance carriers away, he said.

‘Don’t Trust the American People’

Carl of the ATLA believes that many of the critics of class action lawsuits lack faith in American citizens.

“They do not trust the American people serving on juries who also happen to be their voters. They don’t trust judges, and they don’t trust state legislatures,” Carl said. “They just trust Firestone [Tire Company] and the asbestos companies and the chemical industry and the drug industry and the tobacco industry and the insurance industry,” he added.

When pressed on whether some of the lawsuits might have contained exaggerated claims, like those filed by obese customers of fast food restaurants, Carl refused to back down.

“That’s anecdotal, just as it’s anecdotal that every corporation is run like MCI and WorldCom,” Carl responded. “The fast food case that was filed last year was dismissed,” he said, arguing that if a lawsuit lacks merit, it will be rejected by the court system.

‘Situational Ethics’

The critics of today’s class action lawsuits believe reform is long overdue.

“We are never going to see the end of problems in our country so long as situational ethics exercises an influence in the thinking of legislators, judges and lawyers. It is overriding and outweighing individual rights,” Marshner said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Class Action Fairness Act (S. 274) on Friday. McConnell believes the bill will prevent “plaintiff-friendly county courts [from setting] national, regulatory policy.” The bill is designed to rein in class action awards by limiting the practice of trial “venue shopping” and allowing many cases to be moved from state to federal courts.

McConnell also urged passage of Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig’s Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which is designed to protect gun makers from being sued due to the illegal use by third parties of their products.