AOL; the lady doth protest too much, methinks
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AOL, the once power house of on-line communities, has just put up a new feature on the "Money & Finance" portion of their web site. The section is called "Most Outrageous Lawsuits" and they say that "Americans are lawsuit crazy". They also make the claim that lawsuits have "caused some companies to be extra cautious..." Wow, imagine how horrible--lawsuits cause companies to become more careful--how terrible!
AOL says that companies "factor future lawsuit costs into product pricing". It's funny that there are more companies out there who have not been sued than have been sued; if you exclude one corporation suing another corporation. Maybe AOL is simply stinging from a few minor legal altercations that it has had in the last few years:
• $2.6 billion to shareholders who accused its AOL unit in a lawsuit of exaggerating revenue to push through the companies' merger in 2001;
• $25 million for their first settlement for securities fraud including $18 million for settlement of Orman v. America Online, Inc.
• $210 million to settle with the Justice Dept. for fraud charges
• $300 million to settle over fraudulent deals with Bertelsmann AG
• $50 million to settle Alaska's fraud suit
• $105 million to settle Calstrs' fraud suit
• $405 million to settle more fraud claims
• $260 million to settle the University of California's fraud suit
• $34 million in 1998 to settle state's class-actions for overbilling and anti-cancellation policies
• $28 million to pay off various states again for overbilling and anti-cancellation policies
• $15 million to settle claims against their 5.0 software
So, with this track record, I guess AOL wants to now "educate" the public about all those "frivolous" lawsuits out there. It is interesting to note that even insurance company executives have repeatedly stated that there is no pervasiveness of frivolous lawsuits, yet Big Corporations continue to whine on about them.
Let's look at some more numbers:
•Studies reflect that average jury awards do not even keep pace with inflation;
•Tort cases (the kind they will tell you are over running the judicial system) represented only 6% of all cases filed;
•If there is an over burdening of judicial resources, thank Big Businesses' inability to get along. Fights between "the boys" have made up over one half of the cases in the court system;
•Recent analysis from the National Center for State Courts found that tort filings have declined by 5% since 1993.
•According to the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of civil trials dropped by 47% between 1992 and 2001. The decrease was also reflected across specific case types. The numbers of automobile cases dropped 15%, premises liability 52.1%, medical malpractice 14.2% and product liability by 76%.
•The Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics also shows that the trend in award size was down.
•The median inflation-adjusted award in all tort cases dropped 56.3% between 1992 and 2001 to $28,000.
Doctors, corporations and politicians have repeatedly cast this spin of trial attorneys running hither and yon, filing frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit. Yet when the facts are really brought into the bright of daylight, there is only one thing in common with the whining: corporate America wants you to be all about them. They want to tell you what your opinion should be; they want to tell you how you should live; they want to tell you that everything is going to be fine--or the sky is falling.