The Supreme Court of Public Opinion vs. Frivolous Suits

Sometimes I guess you just have to go to court to get a little justice.

Take the Beverly Hills burglar who sued the city claiming his civil rights were violated. While he hid under a nearby house after the burglary, a police dog bit him.

Then there’s the woman who sued because a blind man stepped on her toe at a mall. She didn’t sue the man--she sued the guide dog school that trained his seeing-eye dog.

And who can forget our own Jan-Michael Vincent, who sued the county, claiming he was injured by paramedics trying to save his life after a Mission Viejo car accident. The actor claimed damage to his vocal cords by the paramedics interfered with his getting acting gigs afterward. As if bad acting, plus his guilty plea to a drunk-driving charge after the accident, didn’t influence the studios against him.

Barbara Swist can tell you lots about wild lawsuits. She is executive director of an Orange County group called Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse. It tries to tell the public that too many such lawsuits are clogging our court system. It has named next week Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week.

I don’t get too excited about such weekly attention-getters. Pick any week of the year and some group with a vested interest has proclaimed it their week. Except that Swist’s group has put together some pretty decent credentials to show it’s being taken seriously.

Thanks to her energetic pursuit, Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week is supported by a proclamation from Gov. Pete Wilson, plus from 12 cities here in Orange County, as well as the county Board of Supervisors. Dana Point, Stanton, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Laguna Hills, Yorba Linda, San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente, Westminster and Anaheim adopted proclamations supporting it. Garden Grove said a tight budget has put the city out of the proclamation distribution business. But City Clerk Ruth Smith sent a letter showing its council had approved a supporting resolution.

Seems like almost everybody has been irritated at one time or another by seeing a frivolous lawsuit work its way through the system.

“It makes a few personal injury lawyers rich, while the rest of us pay the price,” Swist said.

Beware, this is not one of your consumer-oriented support groups. Chairman of its board is Sam Roth, who is director of public affairs for the Orange County Medical Assn. How many doctors are willing to admit any lawsuit against them is anything but frivolous? Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse is a business-backed group, usually complaining about consumers, or those lawyers who represent them.

But Roth insists consumers with legitimate complaints need not fear his group’s cause. Cutting down on frivolous lawsuits can make it easier for legitimate legal suits to get resolved faster in the courts, Roth suggests.

“What our group really wants to do is have an imprint on the psyche in Orange County,” Roth said. “We in society need to take responsibility for our own actions, rather than try to find someone to blame when things go wrong.”

The example that comes to mind for Roth is a Newport Beach accident last year that led to several lawsuits against the city. A teen boy was killed when a Chevy Blazer going well over the speed limit and overcrowded with nine young passengers crashed. Though a designated driver who had not been drinking was behind the wheel, most of the passengers had been drinking. Authorities say the frivolity inside the vehicle contributed to the driver’s recklessness.

Many people cried unfair, however, when the city of Newport Beach was sued by some of the teens’ parents, who claim the roadway was not properly designed. The city has vowed to fight all the suits.

Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse says some 2,500 lawsuits are filed in California daily. The group also cites some of the medical profession’s evidence claiming weak lawsuits. For example, it notes (and is verified by the American Council on Gynecology) that two-thirds of the lawsuits filed against obstetricians and gynecologists annually result in zero payments to the plaintiffs.

But that alone makes an interesting point--that one-third of those lawsuits had some degree of legitimacy. I would hope that support for Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week would not dampen the spirits of anyone who thought the court system was the best way to resolve differences.

A wise judge who didn’t want her name mentioned in print recently lectured me when I expressed surprise that so many neighbor-vs.-neighbor disputes were eating up courtroom time.

We don’t want to discourage them from seeing the judicial system as a recourse, she said; otherwise these disputes often wind up in fisticuffs--then the combatants eat up court time over on the criminal side.

Still, I can see all these cities lining up eager to join Swist and Roth in seeking tort reform. All of them have to spend considerable resources just handling claims filed against them. And I’ve seen my share of incredibly dumb lawsuits from my days as a court reporter.

Each day the county processes dozens of lawsuits, a packet usually too much for one person to even carry. I can remember going through them and being amazed how many “slip and falls” we’d come across. (Yes, they have these curbs along Main Street at Disneyland, and yes, if you miss your step you can break your ankle. Whose fault is that?)

One of my colleagues covered a lawsuit against Winnie the Pooh. Someone claimed the person playing the character at Disneyland smacked him with a paw by accident. Winnie the Pooh won that one, after delighting the jury with his testimony.

As a promotion, Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse has put together a pack of playing cards, each one with a different lawsuit anecdote.

My favorite is the Jack of Diamonds: A teen caught two of his teeth on a basketball net while dunking the ball during a basketball game. He sued the makers of the net.

Frivolous, you say? The company settled with him for $50,000.

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Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com.