Frivilous Insurance Lawsuits...mostly hoaxes

By PETER CARLSON

The Washington Post



Are you mad as hell about the plague of frivolous lawsuits that’s ruining this great country? So was I until I read “False Alarm,” by Stephanie Mencimer in October’s Washington Monthly.



It’s an eye-opening expose of how the insurance industry, aided by gullible reporters, has hyped a “lawsuit crisis” by disseminating dubious stories of idiotic lawsuits.



Remember the story of the guy who won a $500,000 lawsuit against a lawn mower manufacturer after he hurt himself while using the mower as a hedge clipper?



It never happened.



How about the guy who won a $300,000 jury verdict against a ladder manufacturer after he fell off a ladder he’d set in a pile of manure? There was no manure.



And the story of the woman who threw a drink at her boyfriend in a restaurant, then won $100,000 suing the restaurant because she slipped in the puddle and hurt herself? More baloney.



All those stories were widely reported and, Mencimer says, all were either totally fictitious or wildly distorted.



These horror stories are hyped by insurance industry groups and their allies to convince Americans that we’re in a “lawsuit crisis.”



Actually, Mencimer writes, the rate of lawsuits has been falling since 1975, and the median jury award to plaintiffs who manage to win has dropped from $65,000 in 1992 to $37,000 in 2001.