Objection! Bush’s Rap on Lawsuits Is Wrong

President Bush wants to reform the legal system. He wasted no time after the election, hitting the road to barnstorm on the theme that there are too many lawsuits for too much money in too many courtrooms.

I probably read more lawsuits than anyone else in the country -- more than 1,000 a day. As news editor for Courthouse News Service, I read daily summaries of every new lawsuit filed in more than 100 state and federal courts in 48 states, plus appeals court decisions from all the federal circuits. What I’ve discovered is a realm of real problems and real people.

Lawsuits provide a close-up view of society. Historian Le Roy Ladurie produced a masterpiece of medieval history by analyzing the legal filings generated during the Inquisition in a small town in southern France. The statements of those who were investigated for heresy enabled Ladurie to reconstruct an entire society.

In much the same way, the numbers and kinds of American lawsuits tell us not so much about lawsuit abuse as about our regional politics, histories and realities.

Bush singled out Madison County, Ill., as having compliant judges and juries ready to accept any lawsuit and pay a plaintiff any sum. He pointed out that many asbestos lawsuits land there.

But the reality is that these days most asbestos lawsuits are not filed in a single, obliging county; you’ll find them all over the upper Midwest and Great Plains. I don’t think that’s because judges or juries are suckers there. It’s because those regions are full of old industrial buildings, built when people remembered the Great Chicago Fire and the Great Peshtigo (Wis.) Fire (which happened the same day and killed far more people than died in Chicago). So for decades, in the Midwest and the Great Plains, buildings were filled with asbestos.

State laws, of course, can encourage or discourage lawsuits. For example, far more “lemon lawsuits” are filed in Pennsylvania than any other state. Next comes Maryland. Are the most bad cars sold in those two states? No, state laws make it easier for car buyers to sue there. And if that’s the way the voters want it, why not?

The state court in Beaumont, Texas, has the highest percentage of lawsuits involving toxic spills, chemical poisoning and industrial accidents. Take a region dependent on the petrochemical industry, add a state Legislature more likely to encourage that industry than control it, and that’s what you get.

What about discrimination? One surprising class of citizens stands out: pregnant women. If only one-tenth of the allegations are true in the lawsuits I’m reading, it would be shocking. Mothers-to-be are demoted, harassed and subjected to unconscionable behavior day after day, as though pregnancy were a loathsome disease. It’s not unusual for a male manager to fire a pregnant woman, saying clients would not want to meet someone in that “disgusting” condition.

Congress and the president may think that the legal system is out of control. But I think it’s a sign of a free society’s health that people are not afraid to sue their neighbors, their bosses, big business and even the police. For all of us, the courts are a last recourse against injustice and abuse. Congress and the president should keep their hands off.