Atlanta Business Chronicle, March 30, 2007

On April 17, millions of Americans will write a check to the Internal Revenue Service. While they have their checkbooks out, they may as well make out another one for $9,827, payable to personal injury lawyers, who annually cost the nation a staggering $865 billion. That's billion with a "b."

This amount is the "tort tax" a typical family of four can expect to pay to cover the cost of our litigation system, according to a new study just released by the Pacific Research Institute, in San Francisco.

To put it in perspective, $865 billion is more than 27 times the amount the federal government spends on Homeland Security and 13 times more than the Department of Education spends to help educate our children. Put another way, every day of the year, the American economy takes a $2.4 billion hit just to sustain our out-of-control legal system. But, if you are thinking that this money goes to ordinary people -- victims, if you will -- think again. Less than 15 percent of it goes to compensate injured people.

For years, the Southeastern Legal Foundation and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce have warned about the negative economic impact of our litigation lottery, both in Georgia and nationwide. Granted, most of this goes to personal injury lawyers, but there are additional costs that drive up the prices we pay for health care by an estimated $124 billion per year. That is because doctors who fear lawsuits must practice defensive medicine by ordering expensive, often unnecessary, tests and procedures to try to avoid the risk that a patient with an enterprising attorney might sue.

Businesses, facing mounting legal costs, often cut back on research and development spending, considered the seed money for innovation. Less innovation means fewer new products and fewer improvements to old products. Most shocking of all, American companies suffer more than $367 billion in lost sales resulting from less innovation, all because of the high costs of supporting the personal injury lawyer industry.

When America spends just $32 billion a year to protect our homeland from another terrorist attack, but $865 billion to support personal injury lawyers, our national priorities are seriously misplaced. When will we wake up and realize that America can no longer afford to be a nation of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers?

George Israel is president and CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce