Dean on tort reform

By Aziz P. -
interesting but unverified letter to the NYT editor from Howard Dean in 1988, on the topic of tort reform:

To the Editor:

Randall Bezanson and Gilbert Cranberg detailed a situation that I hope will get far worse. As a physician, I have been frustrated for years by the reluctance of state legislatures and the United States Congress to deal with liability problems of all kinds.

I have long maintained that until the legal profession and the news media are also afflicted with the increasingly severe consequences of a tort system that benefits few people outside the legal profession, there will be no return to a fair and reasonable system of justice.

The trends toward lawyers suing one another for malpractice and toward outrageous-size punitive damages in libel cases give me hope that the crisis in our tort system may finally come to the attention of those who can make this a public issue and improve the situation for all of us who require liability insurance to do business.

HOWARD DEAN, M.D.
Montpelier, Vt., June 17, 1988


Despite conservative claims to the contrary, I don't think tort reform is as neccessary an issue today as it was in the 1980's - in fact, given the increased rise of severe corporate scandal, I would say that we need less tort reform as a bulwark. There isn't much specific info on the issue at the campaign issues page.

It's a topic worthy of discussion, especially in the context of corporate abuse. Dwight Meredith had a number of excellent posts on the issue of tort reform at his now-defunct blog, PLA. What do you think?

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