TJ Cox: “not long ago we read about an arson that was committed at the DuPont Plaza Hotel, Puerto Rico. The place burned down…”

“not long ago we read about an arson that was committed at the DuPont Plaza Hotel, Puerto Rico. The place burned down, but it was an arson, so naturally the lawyers descended on the scene, and they did not sue the arsonist. They sued every manufacturer of anything that was contained in the hotel. They sued the manufacturer of the drapes and the beddings. They sued the manufacturer even of the casino dice. The kind of feeding frenzy that occurs at the filing of these lawsuits and the attempt to get everyone to settle is really best described as extortion. The people that are getting extorted in the first instance of course are all the people who are being made to pay for something that they did not do. But in the end, the people who are being made to pay are all of our constituents; in fact, all of us. Mr. Speaker, we pay more for things like our home insurance. We pay more for things like a new computer or even or common stepladder. We pay more certainly for our car insurance. All of these things are taxed by an unfair tort system that right now, because of excesses, not because of the substance of justice that we all want to preserve but because of excesses, has turned our civil justice system into a great wheel or fortune lottery. In 1987, my home State of California was home to 107,000 lawyers.…”