"Neither he nor we are under any delusions that we now agree," Norquist said. "But on corporate governance and tort reform, … government transparency questions … we do."
Nader on Tort Reform
For the last 16 years, the tobacco, pharmaceutical, auto, oil, chemical, and health care industries, and their insurers, have fought to limit peoples' rights to sue and to further limit their own liability for the damages they cause innocent victims. Aimed in the direction of Congress and the state legislatures, this coalition of insurance companies and corporate defendants' lobbies has relied on misinformation and anecdotal evidence to attack and destroy decades of slow but careful progress made by state court after state court respecting the physical integrity of human beings against harm. This wrongdoers coalition is out to convince lawmakers to view this progressive evolution not as a source of national pride, or as a source of public recognition that the weak and the defenseless sometimes get justice, but rather as a source of shame, as a source of economic destructiveness, as something that should be stopped.
The current administration has signed into law several pieces of "tort deform" legislation that takes away the rights of injured consumers to sue the perpetrators of their harm. Texas Governor George W. Bush has not only supported enactment of some of the cruelest tort deforms in the country, but he has made this issue a central one for his campaign. My campaign strongly opposes any enactment of tort deform legislation and supports repeal of all such legislative immunity and limitations on liability that Congress and state legislatures have enacted to date. Moreover, I would press for Congress to repeal the provision of the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), to allow medical malpractice victims to sue their HMOs; implement reforms to control the federally-unregulated property/casualty insurance industry; prohibit use of protective orders and confidential settlements to conceal hazards; and strengthen sanctions for companies that engage in document destruction and other discovery abuses.
Even for a Ralphie-hater like me, this is a bit odd. Maybe Grover just misspoke.
