WWJ-DET (CBS) -- Michigan Matters, April 15, 2007

Lawsuit abuse. We all know it exists and costs our economy a lot of money. but do we know the true cost. a recent study by the Pacific Research Institute pegged the annual cost for the entire country at $865.37 billion.

That's a yearly tort tax of $9,827 for a family of four. that's more than 27 times the amount the federal government spends on homeland security and 13 times more than the department of educations spends to educate our kids. Put another way, that's $2.4 billion a day spent on our out of control legal system. worse yet, only 15% goes to plaintiffs to compensate for their injuries these rest goes to the attorneys. We're paying more for our cars, more for health care, more for insurance and everything else in our lives, - just to make lawyers rich. so next time you see that tv ad for the personal injury lawyer ask yourself are they in it to help people or are you paying thousands more so it can go right into their pocket.