No-Fault Insurance

The arguments going on now about what kind of insurance system California should have, including The Times’ editorial, miss the point. The tort system can be good or bad, and the no-fault system can be good or bad. Where reform of the abuses of the insurance system has been introduced in the form of elimination of payments for “pain and suffering” in minor accidents that cause no long-lasting injuries, no-fault has worked reasonably well, as in New York and Massachusetts.

Where real reforms have not accompanied the change to no-fault, as in New Jersey, the results have disastrous. New Jersey has the worst of both systems and the good points of neither. California citizens and the Legislature should be very wary of making any change that does not include real reforms. Any change to the system which does not reduce or eliminate large cash payments for minor jostling of accident “victims,” and which does not therefore simultaneously reduce the incomes of the trial lawyers, is worse than useless. The change must come in the money paid to “victims” with no injuries, not in the format (tort versus no-fault) of the system.

SINCLAIR BUCKSTAFF

Northridge