A Quick Route to Citizenship

A Reuters news article reveals that an increasing number of legal permanent resident aliens (those with green cards) are taking advantage of military service to shorten the time needed to become a United States citizen. The option became available when President Bush signed an executive order in July 2002 making the shortcut possible. The article is spiced with personal accounts and can be accessed at the link.

Notification & Consent Laws Reduce Teen Risks

A Florida State University news article 'Abortion notification, consent laws reduce risky teen sex' referenced a study whose results lend support to those advocating the passage of parental consent laws as a means of reducing risky sexual behavior. From the cited article:

"Jonathan Klick, the Jeffrey A. Stoops Professor of Law, and Thomas Stratmann, professor of economics at George Mason University, came to that conclusion after they looked at the rates of gonorrhea among teenage girls as a measure of risky sex in connection to the parental notification or consent laws that were in effect at the time.

The researchers found that teen gonorrhea rates dropped by an average of 20 percent for Hispanic girls and 12 percent for white girls in states where parental notification laws were in effect. The results were not statistically significant for black girls. The study will be published in an upcoming edition of The Journal of Law Economics and Organization.

"Incentives matter," Klick said. "They matter even in activities as primal as sex, and they matter even among teenagers, who are conventionally thought to be short-sighted. If the expected costs of risky sex are raised, teens will substitute less risky activities such as protected sex or abstinence."

In this case, the incentive for teens is to avoid having to tell their parents about a pregnancy by substituting less risky sex activities. In doing so, the researchers say, the rates of gonorrhea among girls under the age of 20 went down."

Capping Lawsuits

An article in The Tribune-Democrat entitled 'Merck payouts could be lethal' suggests as the subtitle reads: "Cap needed on lawsuit awards."
The italicized article is quoted below. My comments are in bold print.


Big pharmaceutical companies have a lot of money, right?

Not if the type of punitive damage awards juries levied against Merck & Co. continue.

A 77-year-old New Jersey man received an award of $9 million in punitive damages plus $4.5 million in compensatory damages in his suit against Merck, makers of Vioxx. The drug was taken off the market in 2004 after a study linked it to increased risks of heart attacks.

How much money is sufficient compensation for a 77 year old? The standby argument is that no amount of money can compensate one for whatever was suffered. But what does it matter whether one has five million in savings resulting from an award or fifty million? These award settlements are not cost free for society as a whole. They inhibit the introduction of new beneficial drugs and decrease the health of affected individuals to the extent that our intimidating legal system inhibits the availability of medically useful drugs.

One juror in the New Jersey civil trial said she was swayed most by the fact that Merck could have changed the Vioxx label, indicating there could be a risk of heart attacks long before the drug was withdrawn completely.

Last August, at a trial in Texas, Merck was ordered to pay $253 million in another Vioxx lawsuit. The amount will be reduced to not more than $26.1 million because Texas has a cap on punitive damages.

The Texas law makes sense. Excessive awards affect us all in harmful ways. Besides inhibiting the introduction of beneficial products into the marketplace they harm entire industries, make America less competitive and encourage frivolous and fraudulent claims motivated by greed.

So far, Merck has won two cases and lost two concerning Vioxx. It still faces about 9,650 cases in state and federal courts. If it loses half of them and the pattern of awards continues, it could most likely bankrupt Merck.

It certainly would remove money that could be used for research to discover new medicines, almost certainly would require even higher prices for its prescription drugs and could result in some medicines many people depend upon being no longer available.

We have long favored the right of individuals to seek and obtain in courts recompense when they are wronged. Unfortunately, the situation of civil lawsuits has gotten out of hand because of the often unreasonable awards by juries.

This is what has happened to the medical profession and the malpractice-insurance industry. Sensational awards by juries that apparently believe doctors and insurance companies have all the money in the world have driven insurance costs so high in Pennsylvania that some physicians cannot afford to practice here, and others have to set higher fees to cover insurance costs, driving up already high costs for individual medical insurance policies.

We believe people who are truly aggrieved should receive payment of all their resulting expenses and receive some additional amount for their pain and suffering. That amount should be reasonable and realistic.

Should Pennsylvania place a cap on jury awards for pain and suffering and for punitive damages?

Unfortunately, that appears to be the only way to keep such awards from going into orbit, and provide some semblance of evenhanded justice.

Good point. Our justice system impacts many who are not a party to particular lawsuits. It is time to protect their interests as well.