House Majority Leader Mike Turzai wants to raise your taxes and help his big-shot Wall Street friends put more money in the bank.
Mr. Turzai's craftily titled "Fair Share Act" will allow corporate wrongdoers to evade accountability while passing along the costs of their negligence to Pennsylvania's taxpayers.
Under a long-standing legal doctrine called joint and several liability, if your family is struck by a tractor-trailer but the driver only has minimal insurance coverage, the trucking company has to compensate you for your lost wages, medical bills, etc. Needless to say, Mr. Turzai's corporate friends don't like joint and several liability. They would rather hang the truck driver out to dry and leave you and your family without the money you need to pay your bills.
Joint and several liability, which applies to all types of injury cases, has been with us since the colonial days. The purpose of the law is to make sure, first and foremost, that injured people are made whole and don't become a burden on society. It's actually a simple concept we teach our kids: If you and your friends throw a rock through a window, all of you are equally responsible for fixing it.In Turzai's America, negligent defendants would only have to pay their "fair share." Without getting into a boring math lesson, the upshot is that lots of injured people won't get the money they need, corporations and insurance companies will laugh all the way to the bank, and the taxpayers will get stuck with the tab.
That's because under-compensated victims of negligence will have to rely on the state's Medicaid program, and the state Department of Public Welfare won't be reimbursed for money spent to provide health care for negligence victims until their lawsuits are resolved. Those two developments alone could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue and additional costs for our already cash-strapped commonwealth. Last, but certainly not least, health insurance plans won't be reimbursed for providing health care to negligence victims, which means higher premiums for all of us.
In addition, Mr. Turzai's "lawsuit reform" proposal will actually increase the amount of litigation, as corporate defendants add doctors and other defendants to dilute their own liability. It will also create more litigation between jointly negligent defendants as they sue each other to determine who has to pay the damages.
Legislators who are concerned about our ballooning deficits and out-of-control government spending shouldn't be giving a pass to negligent corporations and insurance companies. If they are concerned about legal fairness, they should support a common-sense proposal by Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, which guarantees the legitimately injured full compensation while making sure taxpayers aren't left holding the bag. source: Auto insurance quotes, Get auto insurance quotes, Compare auto insurance, Auto insurance comparisons, Auto insurance quote, Instant auto insurance, Affordable auto insurance, Auto insurance companies, Auto insurance rates, Auto insurance discounts, Auto car insurance, Student auto insurance, Auto insurance brokers, General auto insurance, American auto insurance, Auto insurance UK, Auto insurance claims, Fake auto insurance, Auto insurance complaints
