General liability ins
Blogcritics Comments on The Truth About Lawsuits and Liability Insurance
A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously.
- Comment by Mohjho on The Truth About Lawsuits and Liability Insurance
JohnWhat exactly are you suggesting be done? Do you think that litigation be more difficult to file or that some arbitrary cap be placed on the payoffs? You use Burger King as an example of the Corporation not having to pay for loosing large settlement. This is just not true. If there is an impending large dollar lawsuit against a company, then a financial liability is entered in the financial statements of that year. This liability affects that value of the company and can lower the stock price. Check out some financial statements and see for yourself.Seems most of the mega payouts are not for costs of death or hospital bills, but punitive.What you are suggesting is that when a large corporation is ordered to pay a huge fine, that in reality, they don't pay, but simply passes to all the citizens of this country. How would it sound if a person is ordered to pay a large fine for a crime but was so privileged that he could pass the fine off to the rest of us? How would that denture future crime or negligence? Maybe the problem is that the legal system favors the large corporations that can afford to lobby our politicians. The absurd size of the payout is a symptom of litigation laws that companies use against each other in order to maximize their competitive effectiveness. But when the common citizen uses it, it is portrayed as somehow unfair or just a tool of the trial attorneys cabal. - Comment by Bliffle on The Truth About Lawsuits and Liability Insurance
the real scandal in insurance is that state and federal governments allow the ins. cos. to operate rather open monopolies, carving up markets as they please, and charging exorbitant rates. Then they cut your coverage and increase your premium if you ever make a claim. Ins. cos. only pay out about half, in claims, of what they take in in premiums. Does that make sense to you? Where does the money go?And you can pay into a med ins. policy for 40 years, then when you finally come down with the Heebeejeebies they'll tell you they don't cover that!They've rigged the game with the immense influence of their lobbyists over congressmen. For example, the Plan D drug benefit: you, the client, the sucker, get one chance a year to pick out one of the 50 companies for drug insurance, and you can't change it without penalty for a year. But the ins. co. can change their pharmacy at any time, thus obviating your coverage! - Comment by John Bambenek on The Truth About Lawsuits and Liability Insurance
If I'm part of a multi-billion dollar industry's campaign of misinformation, I'd certainly like to get paid for my services.I've got no problem with lawsuits in general. I have a problem with the fact that (assuming there is real negligence) the people who pay for the lawsuit are not the people responsible for the liability.If a CEO decides to have his company engage in a reckless and negligent manner, his insurance company pays, which helps him, in advance, pass the cost down to his customers and those customers who by products from that industry.The CEO never has personal liability, and therefore, no motivation or incentive to behave in a correct manner. - Comment by Bliffle on The Truth About Lawsuits and Liability Insurance
This is just part of the ongoing Insurance Monopolys campaign of misinformation and special pleading about lawsuits. The actual effect of liability and personal injury lawsuits on the economy is miniscule. Far greater is the bainful influence of the monopolies themselves that are allowed to operate in defiance of the laws, sometimes as open oligopolies dividing up markets as they please.This BK affair has resulted in NO settlement and no awards have been made. Should an award be made it will probably be a small amount, as is customary in such cases. Then it will be appealed and whittled down by successive appearances before judges. Judges are notoriously pro-institution and pro-business. Only juries have any inclination to settle in favor of individuals, and their decisions are customarily curtailed by judges in appeals. - Comment by RedTard on The Truth About Lawsuits and Liability Insurance
Agreed, we need to get away from the big multimillion dollar payout. Pull doctors licenses if they're incompentent. Hold willfully negligent business people criminally liable for their actions or bar them by court order from holding future management or supervisory positions. Put drug addicted employees who mangle someone in jail and throw away the key.I think now we've started to see the creation of a society that believes a tragedy or accident earns them a paycheck. It's was sad commentary, but it does contain a nugget of truth, the whispers you heard about select 9/11 families. Some were seeking vast sums of money for their loss. They believed they we're owed millions for for having a family member in the wrong place at the wrong time.The people who really should feel bitter are the husbands who comes home to a bound, tortured, raped, and murdered wife and kids. The person taken down in gang crossfire. They get nothing because the killer can't directly be linked back to someone with big pockets yet their loss is at least as great as all these others.Here's an idea if you insist on trial payouts, instead of giving those big punitive checks to one individual with one tragedy, put it into a fund to help all victims of tragedy. Instead of a few getting multimillion payouts with the majority getting nothing, everyone facing a tragedy would get a little bit to help get their lives back in order.
