Sacramento Bee (California)
Tort reform is a sham In his simplistic history of the decades-long campaign by insurance and other industries to block people’s right to sue (“Tort war general cashiered,” Feb. 12), columnist Dan Walters fudged on several key points.
In 1988, voters angry about high insurance premiums (and tired of the failed promises of tort reform) sponsored a ballot measure to roll back and regulate insurance company premiums and profits. Contrary to Walters’ inference, both the insurance industry and the California Trial Lawyers Association opposed the grass-roots-based Proposition 103. It passed, and their four competing measures failed.
Since then, Proposition 103 has saved Californians more than $23 billion on their auto insurance alone, according to the Consumer Federation of America. Moreover, it did what tort reforms enacted in 1975 failed to do: reduced the price of medical malpractice insurance. Hardly what Walters calls “fairly minimal” results.
– Harvey Rosenfield, Santa Monica – Author of Proposition 103
