Overdue Tort and Legal Reform

By Michael A. Jackson

A) Limit damages so doctors can afford insurance thereby reducing healthcare costs.

B) Have a system to stem the tide of frivolous law suits that are destroying small businesses and community involvement.

C) Find a means of the monitoring and disciplining the lawyers and discontinue the practice of the inmates running the asylum.

D) Fix the legal system that has been formed for the benefit of lawyers and not to protect and serve the people of California. Legal reform examples:

At Disneyland, my three year old son can go on the Matterhorn, but he cannot go on the bumper car at It's a Bug's Life children area. This shows what lawyers have done to our culture and businesses. A three year old in the past would have been able to go on the slow moving bumper cars, but alas we no longer live in a time that people take responsibility for themselves, but must sue others at the first opportunity.

I recently served on a Jury where the defense attorney put on a witness that she probably knew was lying. Were there any sanctions, NO, this is just business as usual and it put an unreasonable doubt in the minds of a couple of jurors that had to be convinced to move back to the truth and reality.

The Trevor Law Group used the California's unfair business practices law to extort money from small businesses. Did our legislators fix the law; no, one actually went to a trial lawyer meeting following the charade of hearings to supposedly fix the law.

Steven E. Feldman and Robert E. Boyce, attorneys for the child killer David Westerfield who brutally murdered Danielle Van Damme, were paid over $300,000 of taxpayer's money to defend someone that they knew was guilty. They had offered to lead authorities to Danielle's body and yet were allowed to spend tax payer money on a defense that put the parents on trial and presented evidence that they knew was false. This money could have gone to our schools instead of a couple of lawyers. The California State Bar would not even open a case on these two, because they have no interest in reforming the system that allows out of control lawsuits and patently false defenses.

These are only recent examples of what is going wrong. We have the lawyer class that is able to write laws, argue the law that they have written in court, and then have another member of the team be the Judge. This is a system of, by and for the lawyers and not in the people's best interest. We must have an independent system to oversee the lawyers and not let California's state bar association perform this function. We have to clean up the court system and give more rights to the law abiding citizens and not the criminals. We need to defend the concept of minimum sentences in order to keep control out of the hands of lawyers.