Inflated figure undercuts premise
PRI in the News
By: Ralph Cook
6.16.2007
Montgomery Advertiser (AL), June 16, 2007
If you want to build a good house, you start with a good foundation. If only the Pacific Research Institute, which incorrectly states that the U.S. civil justice system costs taxpayers $865 billion a year, had followed that advice. Many of PRI's arguments rely on a publication by insurance industry consultants Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, data a leading Tillinghast researcher even said could be manipulated by tort reform advocates to mislead people. The $865 billion figure PRI advertises contains a long list of costs not at all associated with the civil justice system. For example, the Tillinghast study which PRI calls the "gold standard" and bases much of its study on, says tort costs in the United States are around $279 billion. Business Week, one of the corporate community's most trusted publications, said Tillinghast's total included "everything from payouts for fender-benders to the salaries of insurance CEOs," and is "a wild exaggeration." With Tillinghast's grossly exaggerated total tort costs of $279 billion, PRI's total, largely based on and more than three times Tillinghast's, is even more far-fetched. Department of Justice statistics show the number of civil trials dropped by 47 percent and tort cases dropped by 31 percent between 1992 and 2001. Finally, Insurance Journal, a major insurance industry publication, said the Tillinghast publication PRI used as the basis for much of its study has "nothing to do with the costs of litigation, courts or the legal system" and is "wrong," "misleading" and "highly unreliable."
Ralph Cook, President
Alabama Association for Justice
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