Follow Up to Midnight Regulations

In response to a posting last week about Midnight Regulations, one reader posted the following comment:

I hope you are correct. Trial lawyers have added so much to the cost of every product and service we buy and use. Any way to corral their practice is a good for the country.

This is exactly what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would have the public believe. But the idea of a so-called "tort tax" simply is not borne out by facts. In fact, three law professors have recently debunked the purported study cited by so many industries. Those professors noted that

"Not one of the numbers included in the table of tort costs in the report comes from a ‘prestigious academic publication’ or was subject to peer review by independent experts."

The fact is, there is no such "tort tax" in America and the Bush Administration’s midnight regulations are not intended to benefit the American consumer, but rather to protect corporations from being held responsible when they injure innocent consumers.

If we have learned anything over the last few months, it is that consumers pay a tax on the "golden parachute" of corporate executives. It is the greed and avarice of corporate executives that the American consumer should revolt against, not some fictional tort tax.