Since this post includes an assessment of our study “Jackpot Justice,” we thought it might be helpful to address a few points. First, there was mention of the review of our report by Judge Richard Posner, but no mention of our response to that review. For those who are unaware, we have published a response to Judge Posner. It is available at the following address: http://www.pacificresearch.org/press/opd/2007/opd_07-04-23lm.html. Judge Posner has been notified of the response and has agreed to post a link to it on his next blog update. We have identified 24 factual errors, misrepresentations, and inaccuracies in his review of our report.
Also, we noticed in the post that there was contention as to the cost of lawsuit abuse. Tillinghast’s report is upfront about the fact that they look only at direct tort costs, inclusive of all settlement and trial award judgements, both those considered abusive and legitimate. Mr. Sutter is quite right that calling this the cost of lawsuit abuse is incorrect. His report does not purport to tally the costs of abusive or wasteful tort lawsuits.
Our study, on the other hand, does not claim that our estimate of $9,827 is the cost of abusive lawsuits; we cite it as the total social cost to a family of four, excluding transfer payments (settlements and judgement awards).
Of all the groups discussed in the post, PRI is the only organization that calculated a cost of excessive tort lawsuits. This dollar figure, once again based on the social costs and excluding transfer costs, comes to $589 billion annually. Though we were forced to admittedly use a second-best approach to determine this cost, our determination of annual excess social tort costs, in terms of a family of four, comes to $7,848.
Sincerely,
Dr. Lawrence J. McQuillan and Hovannes Abramyan
Comment byDr. Lawrence McQuillan and Hovannes Abramyan - April 27, 2007 at 6:09 pm
