Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times has wrtten a terrific BP oil spill blog post in his Suntimes blog.
Here’s the link: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/07/bps_tree_fell_on_my_lawn.html
Roger has just recently discovered the concept of corporate immunity and liability limitations in this country. But we in the legal community have known it well; it is not a new phenomenon and we have been trying to combat it, with limited success, for years. State and federal legislators have passed various onerous anti-citizen, pro-business, reforms over the years. One of the most onerous is in my own state, Michigan, where drug manufacturers enjoy complete immunity from liability for any dangerous or defective drug that has been FDA approved. Since a drug cannot reach pharmacy shelves without FDA approval, this amounts to blanket immunity for the pharmaceutical industry in Michigan. Why did the Michigan legislature do this, you ask? To get more pharmaceutical companies to locate in Michigan. How many have done so? Not a single one; one company left the state after the law was enacted.
In other states, corporations enjoy various limited immunities, and, in addition, they enjoy what has become known as "tort reform", nothing more than a fancy name for limited corporate liability and articificially low, capped, damages. Conservative judges have narrowly interpreted existing laws to benefit corporate rights over human rights. These corporate interests retain lobbyists and scream "lawsuit abuse" on the rare occasion that they are hit with a reasonable award or penalty. These "Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse" groups (not "citizens" at all, but corporate interest lobbyists in disguise, wolves in sheeps clothing, so to speak) have produced advertisements, written articles and posted blogs that bastardize the truth about the civil justice system.
Corporations have been getting away with this crap for years. Along come the BP oil spill and, suddenly, immunity and other corporate protections that are granted at the expense of individual citizens are front and center, visable for all of America to see. In BP and the Gulf, America does not like what it sees. Here’s more, America: How would you like to give your child some medicine, have that medicine kill the child, and find out that there is not a thing you can do to hold the manufacturer accountable? How would you like to get a call that one of your loved ones has been killed, maimed or paralyzed in an accident and that your state limits his/her recovery to such artificially low limits that the victim must go on public assistance just to survive, even though a private insurance company made millions covering the risk? How would you like to find out that the serially negligent doctor who botched your surgery enjoys more legal protections than you do?
This is what is becoming of our civil justice system. The hardy citizens of the Gulf Coast region are just now finding this out, the hard way. Only you, the American citizen, can stop this troubling phenomenon of protecting corporate profits on the backs of private citizens, of trading citizen rights for corporate welfare. Wake up, America, before it is too late.
Mark Bello has thirty-three years experience as a trial lawyer and twelve years as an underwriter and situational analyst in the lawsuit funding industry. He is the owner and founder of Lawsuit Financial Corporation which helps provide cash flow solutions and consulting when necessities of life funding is needed during litigation. Bello is a Justice Pac member of the American Association for Justice, Sustaining and Justice Pac member of the Michigan Association for Justice, Business Associate of the Florida, Tennessee, and Colorado Associations for Justice, a member of the American Bar Association, the State Bar of Michigan and the Injury Board.
