John Edwards specialized in infant cerebral palsy and brain damage cases. He used dubious “experts” and pseudo science—later discredited—on gullible juries to fleece doctors, hospitals and their insurers out of tens of millions of dollars.
One of his more shameless, courtroom exhibitions is recounted here by the New York Times:
Ann Coulter writes in “Godless” on pages 185-186:
“As a result of such lawsuits, there are now more than four times as many cesarean sections as there were in 1970. But curiously, there has been no reduction in babies born with cerebral palsy. All those cesareans have, however, increased the mother’s risk of death, hemorrhage, infection, pulmonary embolism, and Mendelson’s syndrome, while also driving up the cost of medical care for every man, woman and child in America.”
There has to be a middle ground and that is what tort reform and limits on damages tries to accomplish. Otherwise, the judicial system is turned into a vehicle by greedy lawyers for robbing everybody.
I doubt if you have ever experienced the greed of insurance companies bent on taking everyone’s premiums and never paying those who are injured by their insured. The tactics they employ include practices every bit as dishonest as any employed by John Edwards or any other plaintiff’s lawyer. What is the point of a 350K cap on pain and suffering for someone who, through the fault of another has been forced to endure constant and unremitting pain for years and years that could have been avoided? Let us say a person injured and put in a wheel chair with brain damage, for example, has medicals already of 300K and future care costs of 2 million and lost income of 600K. Why not let the jury decide what the other damages are? If there is no fault there are no damages; if there is fault in such a case the award should reflect the magnitude of the culpability as the jury sees it, not a government fiat. Juries are not so easily fooled as you seem to think.