Firing off a charge against the insurance gang

Elana Levin

Firing off a charge against the insurance gang

The gun lobby must be firing pistols at the ceiling in celebration. Congress has just voted to shield gun manufacturers from responsibility for their own irresponsible sales practices.

Ok, so now we know who's in the pockets of the NRA but beyond that this is an attack on the civil justice system. This is backdoor "tort reform" or more accurately Tort DE-form.

The gun industry is far from the only group engaging in this sort of lobbying to gut the civil justice system. For example, our friends in the insurance lobby (the good folks who brought you the AIG scandal). The insurance industry has been fighting against the public's right to sue by claiming that malpractice suits are the reason rates are high.
They're not.
And we can prove it.

America's civil justice system provides a mechanism for ordinary people to hold giant corporations and government agencies accountable when they act wrongfully. The threat of lawsuits also serves to make better corporate citizens by forcing companies to do right by the public in the first place less they have to pay damages later.

If you want to hear more about the coordinated attack on the justice system and how it impacts everything from your rights to your pocketbook to how corporations conduct business check out our "Marketplace of Ideas" event this Monday with Harvey Rosenfield, the man that took on the insurance industry and won.

Elana Levin: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 2:36 PM, Oct 21, 2005 in Civil Justice | Insurance Industry
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I too was sad to see congress pass this bill to take responsibility out of the gun manufacturers hands. This was bascially done, as New York v. Beretta was making it's way through the court system. This litigation had the possibilty to really stick to the gun makers and it had the bakcing of mayor Bloomberg. Now that congress has done this act of injustice, I don't know what will happen with that case.

There's a good article in last month's Mother Jones on the gun manufacturers and the "Iron Pipeline" aka I95 which allows gun runners to move guns from the south into New York.