The power of the truth.

Greed is good! Greed is right! Greed works! Greed will save the U.S.A.!

--Michael Douglas as stockbroker Gordon Gekko in Wall Street

If the enemies of civil justice had celebrated the millennium with a generous dose of truth serum, there might have been some explanation for recent revelations concerning the health of corporate America, which, to satisfy its own insatiable profit-seeking appetite, continues to promote utterly fallacious arguments on an array of tort "reform" bills in Congress.

In light of recent statistics on corporate profits, it is easy to question the need for corporate bailout bills such as small business and distributor immunity, vicarious liability protection for rental car companies, asbestos manufacturers' liability, statutes of repose for workplace products, and further protections for the medical and insurance industries.

While attempting to justify advantages bestowed on American businesses by a forgiving tax code, special interest legislation, and accepted business practices, spokespeople for industry never dwell on tort "reform" as a necessary incentive for the growth of corporate profits. This refreshing, but I suspect inadvertent, candor extinguishes the need for any rational consideration of tort "reform." Unfortunately, a blizzard of campaign contributions and an army of lobbyists relentlessly toil to obscure the truth.

Several recent studies reveal extraordinary truths about the health of the business community. The Industrial Research Institute has just reported that American industry is pouring massive sums of money into research and development, while emphasizing "more long-range, high-risk, discovery-type research than ever before."

From 1994 to 1999, research expenditures grew an astonishing 71 percent and totaled $166 billion. Most importantly, these funds were utilized for engineering, making prototypes, and testing new products. Not surprisingly, this study was ratified by the National Science Foundation, which found these results to be wholly consistent with its own conclusions.

Consider specifically the pharmaceutical industry's position in this economy. In spite of highly publicized consumer safety disasters such as fen-phen, this industry's ingenuity and product development efforts have been anything but stifled by the fear of lawsuits.

The president of a trade group called Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing of America was recently quoted in USA Today, extolling the virtues of tax incentives that have allowed drug manufacturers to increase their research in the last year by more than 14 percent and to develop 99 medicines for rare diseases in the last decade--a 10-fold increase over the previous decade. Currently, there are more than 1,000 new medicines being produced. This is not exactly an industry tethered by past or future tort cases.

A revelation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics exposes the absurdity of the claim that there is a need for a statute of repose for workplace products. In 1998, employees reported a 4 percent drop in the number of work-related injuries and illnesses even though there was a 3 percent increase in the number of hours worked.

As bereft of validity as the tort "reformers'" arguments are in the face of these glowing reports, their so-called scholarly research is even more attenuated. The rhetorical tool dubbed the "tort tax" is once again being cited as justification for the passage of needless limitations on lawsuits. In order to manufacture a gargantuan dollar figure to improperly motivate naive legislators, corporate apologists include actual monies paid as compensation to deserving victims.

Most egregiously, approximately one-third of this "tort tax" of $151.5 billion is insurance company overhead, including bloated profits and obscene compensation packages provided to their own executives. Another estimate goes so far as to include premiums paid for crop, farm, hurricane, flood, and other insurance coverages not associated with tort litigation.

That such self-serving arguments gain traction in the halls of Congress should shock no one. ATLA was outspent more than 150 to 1 by tort "reform" proponents. According to recently reported data on lobbying expenditures, ATLA ranked 109th among associations and corporations. The Chamber of Commerce alone spent approximately eight times as much money. Incredibly, in one survey, ATLA was ranked as the fifth most effective lobbying organization in Washington, a tribute both to the message and to those who deliver it to the politicians.

In the future, the ATLA Endowment will help alleviate budgetary pressures so that more funding can be dedicated to federal legislative issues. In the meantime, we must rely almost exclusively on the sanctity of factual truths. The truth shall remain our sole and extremely effective cudgel.

We must continue to expose and publicize the facts, which constitute a much more powerful and persuasive argument than any greed-whipped rhetoric of corporate servants. Albert Schweitzer was certainly correct that "truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now--always."

With gratitude,

Richard H. Middleton Jr.