Justice, Tranquility and The Greed for Money
Lynn Hubbard is handicapped. She happens to also have her own law firm. In the past year, she sued more than 600 nearly irreproachable institutions for over two million dollars. Hubbard and her entourage of scheming lawyers have not done anything illegal. Some may argue that she has simply exercised her right to the legal system. In any case, Hubbard is part of the growing American society that has discovered large money in mass litigation. This rise in greedy and manipulative lawyers has provided Americans with a skewed financial interest in the American courtroom and has hindered the justice system as a whole. Congress must reexamine tort reform to provide Americans with a trustworthy and
…show more content…
His argument, which focuses on the separation of powers in the American government, explains why Americans rush to the courtrooms unlike other democratic countries. The concept of “checks and balances,” America’s system of separated powers, limited national control over state and local police forces and independent judiciary, was intended to protect American citizens from tyranny (Burke 24). However, it has also made it harder for elected leaders to get things done. Take Britain, Germany, or France, for instance, all of which have centralized governments that provide them with safeguards and social welfare benefits. Instead of national healthcare that is practiced throughout Europe, “Americans get proposals for a ‘patients’ bill of rights’ that would allow the sick to sue their managed-care companies” (Burke 22). The problem has become so out of control in the United States, doctors in Florida, New Jersey, and West Virginia went on strike earlier this year. Delaying surgeries, in an effort to decrease annual insurance premiums of over $100,000, doctors asked Congress for reform on malpractice liability and lowered caps on “pain and suffering.” Eduardo Esper, a cardiothoracic surgeon in Wheeling, West Virginia, was part of the walk out that occurred early in January of 2003. “We’re not prepared, having spent all night with a patient, for that patient to come back and sue us. And the majority of the time those suits are promoted by lawyers that I
This claim arises out of a lawsuit filed by Plaintiff, Debra Nathan-Nenn, on her own behalf, and on behalf of her minor son, Grey Hoffman. The Amended Complaint alleges in general that Ms. Nathan-Nenn executed a written lease to rent a house from the insureds starting on June 1, 2013. The plaintiffs further allege that starting on the day the plaintiffs took possession of the house, the drain in the kitchen sink was not working and the insureds failed to correct this condition. The complaint continues to allege additional deficiencies in the rental property such as mold growth in one of the bedrooms and in various locations of the house due to excess moisture and failure to patch exterior openings, insufficient heating, holes in the exterior walls, an unfinished deck, insufficient weather sealants, vermin in the crawlspace, frozen pipes and lack of running water. The plaintiffs further allege that the insureds have failed to address and resolve the above issues. The most serious claim is that the mold present throughout the house caused the plaintiff and her minor son to become ill.
In many ways, the hospital system in America is set up mirroring our government. They are similar in the way that checks and balances have been set in place to ensure the best possible care is delivered to patients. With these checks and balances there are three main bodies; the governing board, medical staff, and executive management (Showalter, 2017). The duties and responsibilities of each body many times is to oversee and continually check the others. A prime example of this system can be seen through the case of Moore v. The Board of Trustees of Carson-Tahoe Hospital, which took place in Nevada and was heard before the Supreme Court of the state in 1972 (Moore v. Board of Trustees of Carson-Tahoe Hospital, 1972). Specifically, in this case, the duty of the governing board to “exercise reasonable care in selecting and retaining medical staff” is questioned in contrast with the right of the physician to have “due process… when disciplinary action is taken” (Showalter, 2017). In hopes of changing a decision by the governing board, and attempting to reverse the decision of a lower court, the appellant, Dr. Moore, brought the case against Carson-Tahoe Hospital (Moore v. Board of Trustees of Carson-Tahoe Hospital, 1972).
Throughout history, healthcare has always been a heavily debated topic among Americans. In The History of Healthcare in America: The Untold Backstory of Where We’ve Been, Where We Are, and Why Healthcare Needs Reform, Thomas Loker offers his own in depth perspective of the healthcare system. Loker had personal experiences that helped him understand the healthcare system, its problems, and its successes. Loker was exposed to the healthcare system when he served as the Chief Operating Officer at a company that worked with the state governments to deliver medical care to the underserved and struggling populations. Loker emphasizes the fact that the government wastes almost two-thirds of the healthcare budget on unnecessary services as well
As Privy Council held in the case of "Wagon Mound (No 1)" that a party can only be held liable for damage that was reasonably foreseeable, the defendant should not be responsible for losses that are ‘too remote’ from the breach. It is obviously that the university could foresee that Brad have to quit his job to finish the degree and also need to pay for the fees.
In class, we have learned many important topics in the legal, ethical, and regulatory environment of business. However in the classroom setting, we have examined each of these topics individually. Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action allows us to see how the topics learned relate to one another in the context of a real world setting. His book provides an engaging read about the legal practice action while connecting the topics of the relationship between law, business, and ethics; the court system and litigation; alternative dispute resolution; and the nature of the corporation. A Civil Action complements the material learned in class, and it helps to create an overall cohesiveness between the topics learned in class that
While researching the unauthorized practice of law I found that Model Rule 5.5: Unauthorized Practice of Law; Multijurisdictional Practice of Law and Model Rule 5.3: Responsibilities Regarding Nonlawyer Assistance are the same for both the state of Louisiana and national level. It is very important for the law all across the world remain strict with its rules and laws in which the state of Louisiana according to these two rules are both strict but also self explanatory of why it is the way it is.
Throughout the centuries there have been many groups pursuing equal rights for themselves. These groups feel that they are excluded from privileges others possess and are subject to injustices that others are not. These groups feel they deserve better and that their presence in the world is unequal to others’. In the United States a large percentage of women started to feel they warranted equal rights to men. Margaret Fuller was among the supporters of the movement and published ground-breaking article called “The Great Lawsuit.” In “The Great Lawsuit”, Margaret Fuller tries to stop the great inequalities between men and women by describing great marriages where the husband and wife are equal, by stating how society
There are few things in life that could be worse than loosing you child to such a horrible disease as leukemia. One can only imagine having such a tragedy repeat itself throughout you community time after time. To compound such tragedies, imagine being poisoned yourself and having to fight some of the largest local corporations to prove the truth and get it stopped. This is the community setting for Jonathan Harr's true-to-life legal thriller A Civil Action. The book was an award winner for "Best Seller" in 1995 and was named the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Healthcare in the contemporary United States emerges from a long and sordid history that began in the late 1800s when the fight for universal health care came on the heels of the formation of systems that ranged from rudimentary to comprehensive in various European countries including Germany, Norway, Britain, Russia, and the Netherlands (Palmer, 1999). Most of these programs were formed as “a means of maintaining incomes and buying political allegiance”, as conservative governments, primarily in Britain and Germany, worked to stem the flow of the burgeoning socialist and labor parties (Palmer, 1999). During this same time brought a greater transparency of the experiences of industry workers and the “nightmare” conditions they were enduring
There is a need that each school, its administrators and teachers should know the law of torts. In order to create a "culture of safety" principals should manage the risk of negligence to the faculty and students. As Burgett and Schwartz state, “being a teacher, administrator, board member, school employee, parent, or even a student is tricky business these days” (p.9). Therefore, each decision or actions’ steps should be made based upon ethical and legal principles. The particular high school puts an emphasis on health and safety issues. The school, the buildings, and the classroom are certainly the most critical areas of an educational institution where safety and health take place but also behavior and attitude reflect the importance of the serious business of learning. Therefore, the following three legal issues: unsupervised students, hallways, and field trips demand some improvements, accommodations or extra care to maintain the safety and healthy environment for students and employees.
What started out as a much needed revision of the Health Care System has turned into a total overhaul which was not passed with bipartisan agreement. This division is reflected not only in the government, but among the people of the United States as well. Polls are taken daily and most of them show that the vast majority of Americans do not want the Health Care Bill. Due to the larger part of America not wanting this bill and finding the bill itself unconstitutional, many states have now filed a lawsuit against the federal government. More than a dozen states that have filed suit against the government believe that this bill violates the Constitution and many more states are considering joining the lawsuits. Some of these contend that the Health Care Bill infringes upon the Tenth Amendment. This amendment states that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people"(Dethrick 1). This amendment declares that the states have the ability to implement their own decisions despite what the federal government says. This lawsuit will prove to be a long and costly battle. Regardless of the results of this litigation, undoubtedly, the country will remain divided on this issue for years to come.
The concept of providing basic healthcare services to individuals in need has undergone an agonizing transition, from a luxury once only afforded by the affluent to a basic human right granted to citizens of every economic station, and the recently enacted Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to finalize this ethical evolution. Reflecting perhaps the bitter political enmity currently consuming the nation's once cherished democratic process, Republican legislatures in states throughout the union have bristled at the ACA's primary provisions, threatening all manner of procedural protestation as they attempt to delay and derail the bill's eventual implementation. One of the most intriguing aspects of the sprawling, thousand page law, however, has been the stipulation that individual states will be given a choice to either accept federal funding to expand their statewide Medicaid roster, or to forfeit all federal funding for that program in perpetuity. The role of government in monitoring and regulating the healthcare industry has been long debated, and the bitterly contested passage of President Obama's ACA, a law aimed at revising the country's health insurance system through the creating of a federal health insurance exchange to facilitate increased competition among insurers, has rekindled the debate over who holds the ultimate responsibility for regulating the care provided by hospitals, community clinics, and private practices.
Leonard Peikoff believes that national healthcare is unethical and tramples on the individual “negative” rights of hard-working Americans. He makes a point of clearly defining what our “negative” rights are; they are our ‘unalienable, individual rights’ as Americans, in the context in which it was written in the Declaration of Independence, the right to “life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness”. According to Peikoff, “…all legitimate rights have one thing in common they are rights to action, not to rewards from other people.” (Peikoff 2); it is this right to action (pursuit) which Peikoff attributes to the success
The legal system is an essential element in the successful operation of this country. It is a system that is utilized every day, by every type of person, from the average blue-collar worker to the average Wall Street broker. There is a multitude of ways that the legal system is put to use. One such way is the class action lawsuit. A Civil Action, by Jonathan Harr, uses the account of a single case, Anne Anderson, et al., v. W.R. Grace & Co., et al, to illustrate the power and importance of class action lawsuits in the civil justice system.
There are three elements that must be present for an act or omission to be negligent; (1) The defendant owed a duty of care towards the plaintiff; (2) The defendant breached the duty of care by an act or omission; (3) The plaintiff must suffer damage as a result - be it physical, emotional or financial. The court might decide that Freddy (the plaintiff) was owed a duty of care by Elvis (the defendant) if they find that what happened to Freddy was in the realm of reasonable forseeability - any harm that could be caused to a 'neighbour' by Elvis' actions that he could reasonably have expected to happen. The 'neighbour principle' was established in the case of Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932).