Jackson Municipal Judge urges residents to file contingency fee lawsuits

Dickie Scruggs once had this to say about "magic jurisdictions" where judges favored lawsuits and defendants didn't have much of a chance.

[W]hat I call the “magic jurisdiction,”...[is] where the judiciary is elected with verdict money. The trial lawyers have established relationships with the judges that are elected; they’re State Court judges; they’re popul[ists]. They’ve got large populations of voters who are in on the deal, they’re getting their [piece] in many cases. And so, it’s a political force in their jurisdiction, and it’s almost impossible to get a fair trial if you’re a defendant in some of these places. The plaintiff lawyer walks in there and writes the number on the blackboard, and the first juror meets the last one coming out the door with that amount of money. . . . The cases are not won in the courtroom. They’re won on the back roads long before the case goes to trial. Any lawyer fresh out of law school can walk in there and win the case, so it doesn’t matter what the evidence or the law is.

Certainly a municipal judge is different from what he was speaking about, but lest you think Mississippi's judiciary has swung away from favoring trial lawyers comes this story from Saturday's Clarion Ledger where a judge is actually advocating people to file lawsuits, to come together to file them as a class action, and to not worry about the cost because lawyers will take the case on a contingency fee, or a portion of the win.

Municipal Court Judge Ali ShamsiDeen, who spoke at the meeting, had some unconventional advice - sue.

ShamsiDeen said property owners can file simple negligence or nuisance lawsuits against property owners if they can show damages, such as decreases in property values attributable to the blighted property.

Damages in such lawsuits can cover more than monetary losses, including mental anguish or loss of the use and enjoyment of property "because of all these boarded up houses and the dope traffic," he said.

"People are going to have to become more involved in their communities," ShamsiDeen said. "One way is through civil suits."

ShamsiDeen said using tort law to attack blight is "new territory," but it is catching on as cities try to counteract the damaging effects of large numbers of vacant properties.

"The person or persons you are going after don't have to be breaking the law," he said. "Your claim is that (the property owner's) negligence has impacted your home negatively. You aren't looking for a crime. You are looking for cause and effect."

Such litigation can take months or even years to complete, but ShamsiDeen said it costs $155 to file suit and lawyers often take such cases on a contingency basis if a defendant with deep enough pockets can be found.

"One way to attack the problem is as a class action," he said. "The whole neighborhood can sue."

Some attorneys still frown on lawyers going out to chase ambulances for cases, here is an example of a judge doing it for them.

"Trial Lawers Wrong" - Tort Reform Works

The Greenwood Commonwealth had this to say in a recent editorial:

A half-dozen years ago, doctors were up in arms, leaving the state, retiring early or scaling back their practices because of the onslaught they were facing from trial lawyers. The only thing standing between them and insolvency was malpractice insurance, and its cost had soared -- that’s if they could find an insurer.

Thanks to a couple of rounds of tort reform, the situation appears to be largely resolved.

Last week, the state’s largest provider of malpractice insurance announced it was cutting its rates by another 20 percent. It was the fourth consecutive annual rate reduction by Medical Assurance Company of Mississippi. Cumulatively, the premiums that health providers are paying for malpractice insurance are almost 60 percent less than they were shelling out during the peak of the crisis.

It should be remembered that when lawmakers were battling over putting sensible limits on civil damage awards and curbing venue shopping, the opponents -- mostly friends of the trial bar -- scoffed at the notion that the changes would impact insurance rates. They claimed that the rise in malpractice insurance premiums was a result of poor investment returns, not the legal climate.

The stock market has tanked in the past year, and yet malpractice premiums are falling significantly anyway. It goes to further show that the reformers were right, and the trial lawyers wrong.

The editorial follows a press release from Governor Haley Barbour who had announced that Mississippi's largest provider of medical malpractice insurance had lowered it rates, once again, following the trend since the passage of comprehensive tort reform.

Ridgeland-based Medical Assurance Company of Mississippi (MACM) reduced its medical liability insurance rates across the board by 20 percent for 2009. This is the fourth consecutive annual rate reduction and returns the premiums that Mississippi physicians pay for malpractice insurance to rates comparable to those paid in 2002.

In addition to a reduction in rates, tort reform has opened the door for better accessibility to healthcare through an increase in the number of physicians insured by MACM.

“MACM saw a five percent increase in the number of physicians insured by the company between the end of 2002 and the end of 2008,” Governor Barbour said. “These additional physicians are now living and practicing in Mississippi and helping provide the health care that is so essential to a better quality of life for all Mississippians."

Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney praised the rate reduction.

“Mississippi physicians are now paying 42.2 percent less in premium for their professional liability insurance than they did in 2004, after tort reform was enacted through special sessions of the Mississippi Legislature,” Commissioner Chaney said.

“Additional, and much stronger, tort reform was passed during a special session in the spring of 2004. As a result of this combined legislation, Mississippi healthcare has benefited. As an example, if a physician paid $10,000 in premium in 2004, that same physician would pay just $5,780 today as a result of fours years of rate reductions by MACM. In addition, this physician would have received refunds of premium totaling almost $7,000 during this same time period.”

When tort reform was first considered, MACM promised that if the legislation were passed, the company would respond by passing monetary savings to its customers. Through rate reductions and premium refunds for the past four years, MACM has honored this commitment.

I got this nifty chart from a comment over at Mississippi Perspective.

2002 –Musgrove Tort Legislation Passed
2003 – 54% premium increase in premiums
2004 – 19.4% premium increase in premiums
2004 – (Sept) Barbour Tort Legislation Passed
2005 – No change in premium (In December, 15% of premium paid was refunded)
2006 – 5% premium decrease
2007 – 10% premium decrease
2008 – 15.5% premium decrease
2009 – 20.0% premium decrease