Time for Reform
A law that's been a long time in coming may finally soon get passed. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a version of which recently and resoundingly passed the Senate, may finally be coming up for a floor vote in the House.
For those living in a remote shack in Montana, this law hopes to finally eliminate the torrent of frivilous law suits, most of which have been thrown out of the lower courts. Rather than forcing the gun industry to keep paying lawyers and losing their insurance, thus slowly bleeding them of operating capital, they can now get back to just running their business.
I don't really care if someone likes guns or doesn't like guns. I don't feel like debating that. It's a personal choice to own and/or carry a firearm and that's it. It is however a fundamental right and one that has seen serious attempts over the last fourty years to erode it. Even still, this isn't about that, at least not directly.
Sure the Brady Bunch and their ilk want to eliminate the whole of the gun industry. Sure they want to destroy the rights of their fellow Americans. But this is about a trend that has already grown out of control and is getting worse. It is our litigious society. Some empowered liberals see lawsuits as a natural extension of using the courts to achieve their social agenda, the very agenda that has failed to win the hearts and minds of American voters.
After tobacco, guns were a natural, if more shallow-pocketed industry. Big Tobacco seems to have been the test case, and now anything the Left dislikes could be a potential target. Firearms and the fast food industry are the two current favorites. Undoubtedly cars, oil companies, and potentially even alcohol manufacturers could be next. Anything deemed "dangerous to society" by what amounts to an elitist cartel of trial lawyers, lobbyists and 'social justice' activists will be fair game.
It is ironic that individuals who would likely fight hard for other freedoms and against government restrictions in everyday life, would so readily champion the courts deciding how people live and carry out their lives. Doesn't that constitute rule by oligarchy?
So all this boils down to this Act being a good step, but only a scratch of the surface of tort reform. The whole system must be reformed, possibly even torn down and rebuilt. Any system that has become so abusive that it nullifies our system of government is one that has become not only a liability, but a danger in and of itself to the citizenry.
A law that's been a long time in coming may finally soon get passed. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a version of which recently and resoundingly passed the Senate, may finally be coming up for a floor vote in the House.
For those living in a remote shack in Montana, this law hopes to finally eliminate the torrent of frivilous law suits, most of which have been thrown out of the lower courts. Rather than forcing the gun industry to keep paying lawyers and losing their insurance, thus slowly bleeding them of operating capital, they can now get back to just running their business.
I don't really care if someone likes guns or doesn't like guns. I don't feel like debating that. It's a personal choice to own and/or carry a firearm and that's it. It is however a fundamental right and one that has seen serious attempts over the last fourty years to erode it. Even still, this isn't about that, at least not directly.
Sure the Brady Bunch and their ilk want to eliminate the whole of the gun industry. Sure they want to destroy the rights of their fellow Americans. But this is about a trend that has already grown out of control and is getting worse. It is our litigious society. Some empowered liberals see lawsuits as a natural extension of using the courts to achieve their social agenda, the very agenda that has failed to win the hearts and minds of American voters.
After tobacco, guns were a natural, if more shallow-pocketed industry. Big Tobacco seems to have been the test case, and now anything the Left dislikes could be a potential target. Firearms and the fast food industry are the two current favorites. Undoubtedly cars, oil companies, and potentially even alcohol manufacturers could be next. Anything deemed "dangerous to society" by what amounts to an elitist cartel of trial lawyers, lobbyists and 'social justice' activists will be fair game.
It is ironic that individuals who would likely fight hard for other freedoms and against government restrictions in everyday life, would so readily champion the courts deciding how people live and carry out their lives. Doesn't that constitute rule by oligarchy?
So all this boils down to this Act being a good step, but only a scratch of the surface of tort reform. The whole system must be reformed, possibly even torn down and rebuilt. Any system that has become so abusive that it nullifies our system of government is one that has become not only a liability, but a danger in and of itself to the citizenry.
posted by Rob Beck | 11:00 PM
3 Comments:
IIRC -- and it was a while ago, so I might be wrong, but I'm too damn lazy to go look it up right now -- a previous incarnation of this bill was much more general in its grant of immunity. This bill includes exceptions for negligence and the like, whereas the old version seemed to simply bar any case against a manufacturer, even if they had behaved improperly.
There was one prominent example of a gun dealer who had repeatedly been cited for failure to secure and track his inventory, and who had "lost" several weapons (sold them under the table, more likely), and under the old bill (again, IIRC) a manufacturer or distributor would have been immune from liability for continuing to sell him guns. This bill includes a "negligent entrustment" exception.
So it's better, seems acceptable, though I don't buy the runaway litigation premise.
By my recollection, that wasn't the case with the first bill. It did have provisions to allow lawsuits for actual negligence and defective product manufacturing.
I do recall seeing Brady Bunch releases at the time that said otherwise on the negligence issue, but they were flat-out lies.
The bill had incredible support in the House but was killed in the Senate due to partisan wrangling.
The House was waiting for the Senate to compromise on it before running it through again.
I have no problem with a dealer being held liable for not complying with the law, but let us remember that there are laws for that and gun laws, especially for federally licensed dealers, come with very stiff penalties.
Buy it or not, runaway litigation is already here. 20 years ago, the tobacco industry seemed bullet proof (no pun intended). 10 years ago, most people would have laughed at the thought of sueing a fast food place because you got fat. It's here.
I'm not in the habit of taking advocates' words for things, but chances are I heard the claim, looked over the text briefly, didn't find it, and lost interest. I wasn't particularly concerned with it, guns not being a big issue to me. I'll take your word for it.
At the same time, it wasn't selling a dangerous product that killed tobacco -- it was the active coverup of evidence of the danger that opened them up to the enhanced liability. That's a big no-no in product liability. If they'd given appropriate notice of the risks -- as is required of any manufacturer -- rather than working to suppress research that showed the danger, we wouldn't have seen all those tobacco lotto winners. If fast food goes down it'll be for the same reason -- before they made nutritional information available, I'm sure plenty of people assumed it was fair to call McBurgers "food," and those are the people who will be filing suit. And I'm not saying they should necessarily win, but barring entire classes of lawsuits just makes whole different types of abuse possible.
I'd suggest that the escalation of legal awards reflect bigger and bigger ripoffs being perpetrated. Look at Enron -- theft on that scale hasn't always been possible. If tobacco had always borne warning labels, would it ever have become big tobacco? How much did they profit from their deception?
I know the typical response -- that consumers and employees are the ones who suffer, not the people who made the bad decisions. My answer is that we need to re-examine the corporate model and the liability shield it provides to the tortfeasor. We need to enhance personal accountability, not restrict the right to legal remedy. Of course, with our leaders bought and paid for, that option is never on the table.
And the libertarian in me would rather see civil suits than criminal enforcement anyway. Taking the remedy out of the hands of people and trusting government to handle it seems contrary to conservative principles.
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