The Birmingham News, April 1, 2007

With April 15 on the horizon, millions of Americans can soon expect to be writing a check to the IRS. While they have their checkbooks out, they may as well make out another one for $9,827, payable to personal injury lawyers. For the entire country, the bill comes to $865.37 billion.

That astonishing figure represents the "tort tax" a typical family of four can expect to pay every year, and the total cost of our litigation system, according to a study released last week by economists at the Pacific Research Institute, based in San Francisco. We can thank Lawrence J. McQuillan, PRI's director of business and economic studies and lead author of "Jackpot Justice," for calculating the most comprehensive cost estimates of our legal system to date.

To put it all in perspective, consider that $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. Or think of it this way: Every day, the American economy takes a $2.4 billion hit just to sustain our out-of-control legal system. And less than 15 percent of this goes to compensate injured people.

For years, Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse has warned about the negative economic impact of our litigation lottery, in Alabama and across the country. Personal injury lawyers always know to the dollar how much they collect from jackpot-sized verdicts. AVALA is glad someone added up how much the trial bar's excesses are costing America.

America's litigation lottery doesn't just enrich lawyers. It drives up prices we pay for health care by an estimated $124 billion per year because doctors who fear lawsuits increasingly engage in defensive medicine - ordering more tests and procedures just to avoid the risk that a patient with an enterprising attorney might sue.

The authors of "Jackpot Justice" tell the story of a Washington state patient who suffered a broken jaw while working at a construction site. Despite a clear diagnosis, emergency room doctors fearing possible litigation ordered a battery of tests, including CT-scans and MRIs. The additional cost of these "lawsuit-prevention" tests was about $20,000.

Doctors aren't the only ones altering their business practices in response to personal injury lawyers' onslaught. Businesses that face mounting legal costs must often cut back on research and development spending - the seed money for innovation. Less innovation means fewer new products and fewer improvements to old products.

According to PRI's estimates, American companies suffer more than $367 billion in lost sales from less innovation because of the high costs of supporting trial lawyers.

Not surprisingly, U.S. tort costs far outstrip our economic competitors. According to another study cited by PRI, the United States spent 2.2 percent of its GDP on tort costs, compared to 0.7 percent for the United Kingdom, 0.8 percent for Japan and 1.1 percent for Germany. If you assume U.S. costs should be in line with our rivals, the authors project that we waste $589 billion per year on excessive social tort costs.

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 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? Lewis Fuller, owner of Fuller Medical Supply in Gadsden, is chairman of Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse, a nonprofit, statewide organization. E-mail avala@mindspring.com. Web site: alabamalawsuitabuse.org.