On one of my listservs for some reason the story came up of the lady who spilled her McDonald's coffee and made a gazillion dollars for no good reason because of our crazy courts. Someone pointed out that, in fact, the system worked just like it should have--that McDonald's really was serving coffee at dangerously hot levels, and the response to the suit was they stopped doing that. That is, without evil government regulatory intervention, the private court system worked--McDonalds stopped engaging in a practice that was bad for its customers, and one of the people damaged by that practice got compensated.
There's been a raft of this kind of thing in medical devices. Here's a guy who is going after a J&J subsidiary, for knowingly selling hip replacements that crap out.
I get confused, I guess. Conservatives want "deregulation." And they want "tort reform."
I guess we're on our own.....
