‘Insured Chaos’ in California

Your editorial clearly expresses the frustration which we all have a right to feel about the ballooning auto insurance costs and the various ballot initiatives addressing the problem. In short, the property and casualty insurance companies want to change the tort system to no-fault and the trial lawyers want to arbitrarily lower insurance rates.

Trial lawyers, experts in confusing issues, are desperately trying to delay the inevitable change in our tort system for the obvious reason that it produces a very large percentage of their income. Nevertheless, it seems clear that only by lowering the cost of liability injury claims can we realistically hope to have lower-cost car insurance.

The lawyers would have us believe we can lower our premiums by simply controlling rates. That is just plain silly. Anyone at all familiar with property and casualty insurance knows the companies are very competitive with each other rate wise.

The problems with our injury tort liability system are very complex. But until we are willing to face up to solving them we cannot expect lower insurance premiums.

MAC T. JOLLY

Palm Desert