WMC And the Manufactured Tort Hell

As reported yesterday on Waxing America, two members of the University of Wisconsin Law School  faculty, Marc Galanter and Susan Steingass, published a report, Civil Justice in Wisconsin: A Fact Book, Commentary.  

To sum up just a few of their relevant findings, Wisconsin does not have an excessive number of tort filings and any increases in civil litigation are either in the area of small claims or businesses suing one another over contract disputes.

There are two astonishing items about the report. First, there is the modest introduction the authors bring to their work:

It is our hope that this account of the facts will not only help citizens to understand the performance of their civil justice system, but it will enable them to assess the validity and seriousness of the criticisms leveled by its detractors and the defenses raised by its proponents. The goal of this understanding is not to provide answers but to dispel illusions about the system in favor of a realistic, if necessarily incomplete, picture of what is actually out there.

The second, and more explosive, is the reaction from Wisconsin Manufactures and Commerce. Keep in mind that WMC beat the drum of tort reform for several years relying on the most bizarre of studies to 'substantiate' their case.

Without time to read the report or consider how his response might reflect on WMC, media director Jim Pugh told Todd Finkelmeyer of The Capital Times, UW report: WMC Claims of excessive litigation in state are bogus,

It should come as a surprise to no one that the UW Law School is trying to say that we don't have enough litigation in Wisconsin," said Pugh. "They have a vested interest in trying to graduate as many future lawyers as they can accommodate. So they have an interest in expressing that point of view."

This from an outfit that based its claims that Wisconsin was in need of 'tort reform' using a poll from the Institute for Legal reform. U.S. Chamber of Commerce Lies About Wisconsin "Tort Reform", Waxing America, April 11, 2006:

Here is all you need to know about the non-partisan, Harris Interactive poll that found Wisconsin in such bad shape:

• Of course the poll is non-partisan.  That is because they did not ask the participants their political party affiliation.
• Yes, it is a poll conducted by Harris Interactive. They will poll anyone on any subject for a price and put their name on it. 
• Harris takes responsibility for the honesty of the polling; they take no responsibility of the use of the poll by their customer in misleading the public.
• The respondents in this non-partisan poll were : a sample of 1,456 in-house general counsel or other senior litigators at companies with annual revenues over $100 million.  Now there is a nice fair, unbiased group of rich,white, males who all represent defendants in tort litigation.  Yes, we are reassured that this is a non-partisan survey but it is certainly not unbiased.  It is fixed, dishonest, and deceptive. Did I say not unbiased?

As we noted April 14, 2008. The real Reason to Buy A Supreme Court

One need go no further than WMC's own surveys of its members to see the irrelevance of tort reform. In its 2006 survey of its members, when asked, "What is the top business concern facing your company?" the  lowest response polled was lawsuit abuse with a measly response of 1.23%.

I'll take the work of two honest scholarly Wisconsin researchers over a survey of 1456 corporate lawyers any day of the week.

Nothing has changed on East Washington Avenue.

Comments

[Michael A. Shea]

It's not just on tort reform that WMC routinely ignores surveys of its own members, or ignores the reaction when they try to mobilize their members to contact legislators - as Paul Soglin has been pointing out for a long time. WMC has been complaining about high taxes for years. But their own membership surveys do not show that to be of urgent concern to actual businesses.

And WMC does the same thing on regulatory reform. In 2003, they produced a report purporting to show a crisis in regulation. They withheld the names of the companies being unduly burdened, citing fear of retribution from government. But it was easy enough to see who the companies were- and if you read press accounts of those cases, you realized that WMC was distorting the facts beyond recognition.

They must be marketing geniuses to keep getting membership dues for services so out of line with their members' needs.

[Not Chuck]

The best part of this report is that it isn't based on surveys, which can be spun. It's based entirely on publicly accessible court records.