No-Fault Car Insurance
* The reason consumer, environmental, civil rights and community groups oppose legal “reform” schemes, such as those shamelessly sold by Michael Johnson, Andrew Tobias and Bill Zimmerman (“A New, No-Fault Road Map to Auto Insurance Reform,” Commentary, June 5), is that 95% of all litigation results from businesses suing each other, yet curbing big business lawsuits and the fees charged by their high-priced attorneys is never addressed. Only the rights of consumers are revoked, for instance, in the initiatives propounded by Zimmerman, Johnson and Tobias, who appear to be no more than a front for rich special interests seeking immunity for wrongdoing.
Under their “strict no-fault” auto insurance system, crafted by State Farm, consumers would lose rights, benefits and dollars to insurers--the reason Californians rejected the insurers’ no-fault initiative in 1988. According to National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners data, eight of the 10 most expensive auto insurance states in the nation are no-fault states.
The “loser-pays” proposal--drafted by Wall Street financiers--would make it harder to sue con artists like S&L; looter Charles Keating. It would be a devastating double-whammy for small investors--mostly senior citizens who, with little left after being ripped-off, can hardly risk having to pay their swindler’s high-priced attorneys to go to court.
The contingency-fee system is the only mechanism that ensures that injured middle-class and low-income consumers, who cannot afford $400-per-hour lawyers, get legal representation. Yet the “consumer-concerned” troika proposes capping plaintiff contingent attorney fees but not defense attorney fees or practices--grossly unbalancing the scales of justice by discouraging plaintiff attorneys from taking the most deserving cases.
The folks behind these initiatives are trying to portray themselves as consumer advocates by wrapping themselves in the banner of past projects undertaken by Ralph Nader and myself, such as Proposition 103. Nader calls them “turncoats who now provide their services for anti-consumer initiatives.”
HARVEY ROSENFIELD
Author, Proposition 103
Los Angeles
