What Tort Reform might do to injured plaintiffs: A return to the "good old days."

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Barry Ritholtz <ritholtz () optonline net>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 07:21:30 -0500
To: dave () farber net
Subject: What Tort Reform might do to injured plaintiffs: A return to the
"good old days."

Hi Dave,

You might have missed the WSJ article (last week) about the plight of
the Titanic survivors. When the Titanic went down, the Tort cause of
action had not yet fully evolved under US law; Politics -- and a lack
of access to lawyers -- created terrible inequities to injured parties;
The Titanic sinking is a perfect example of injured being unable to
receive compensation to the damages caused by a reckless or negligent
tortfeaser (See attached WSJ article, below).

That scenario is before we even contemplate what arises from the law of
unintended consequences; Perfect example is the "Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995", which allowed accountants to escape
liability for acts of Fraud (Enron, Worldcom, etc.):

    (c) AUDITOR LIABILITY LIMITATION- No independent public accountant
    shall be liable in a private action for any finding, conclusion, or
    statement expressed in a report made pursuant to paragraph (3) or (4)
of
    subsection (b), including any rule promulgated pursuant thereto.
    http://www.lectlaw.com/files/stf04.htm

Arthur Anderson may have been forced to dissolve, but they (and other
accounting firms) were financially off the hook for defrauding millions
of investors and leading to the loss of 100s of billions of dollars.

Regards,


Barry Ritholtz
================================
Check out my HTML experiment:
http://www.geocities.com/ritholtz/ow.html




February 5, 2003
DEJA VU
By CYNTHIA CROSSEN
Titanic's Sinking Plunged
Survivors Into Poverty
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1044398577689669693,00.html

In less than three hours, 1,517 people died when the Titanic sank on
its maiden voyage to New York. Most of the bodies were never recovered.

On that April night in 1912, the survivors were lucky: they found their
way onto lifeboats and, eventually, to America. But many of them, as
well as thousands of families of the dead, would soon face another
affliction: They had lost their savings, possessions, wage-earners and,
in many cases, all three.

The Red Cross and Salvation Army quickly mobilized to provide emergency
services for the survivors, such as short-term housing, clothing and
small amounts of cash. Other relief funds sprang up in the U.S. and
Great Britain. But these were soon exhausted. Ultimately, the wreck of
the Titanic condemned many surviving families to lifetimes of poverty.
Widows and orphans would later beg charitable funds for a pair of
eyeglasses or a set of false teeth.

Annie Mitchell, a New York mother of two whose husband died on the
ship, couldn't afford the five-cent subway ride to a relief fund's
offices. But the nine-mile walk got her enough cash to care for herself
and her children for two months. Then she was on her own. "I want some
work where I can live with the children," Mrs. Mitchell told the New
York Sun.

The Titanic's owners -- the White Star Line, a British subsidiary of an
American trust controlled by J.P. Morgan -- became tight-lipped after
the sinking. When surviving crew members arrived in New York, White
Star tried to hustle them back to England without letting any outsiders
talk to them. In July 1912, the company said it had paid no claims thus
far and would contest any future action seeking damages.

White Star, then valued at about $180 million, had the law on its side.
Under a federal statute, the company's liability was limited to the
value of the property salvaged from the ship (14 lifeboats) and its
receipts from passenger tickets and cargo. On Oct. 4, 1912, White Star
asked a federal court to certify its liability at $98,000, a petition
that would eventually be decided in the company's favor by the U.S.
Supreme Court. The ship itself was insured for $5 million.

There was only one way White Star could be forced to pay more: if the
ship had been operated negligently, and the company knew about it.
Inquiries quickly began in Washington, D.C., and London, but both were
tainted by political and social prejudice. The U.S. investigation was
led by Sen. William Alden Smith, whose grandstanding and occasional
obtuseness (Question: "What is an iceberg composed of?") undermined the
weight of the committee's findings.

The British inquiry was technically exhaustive but morally
fainthearted: Despite conclusive evidence that the captain had sailed
the ship too fast through iceberg-studded waters, the British court
exonerated him and White Star, blaming the disaster on "excessive
speed."

"If the court's finding had been worded with the express purpose of
adverting from the White Star Line financial liability for the deaths
of 1,517 persons, it could not have been more effectively phrased,"
editorialized the New York Times.

Despite these setbacks, many people filed lawsuits against White Star
in the U.S. and abroad. Eventually, claims in the U.S. rose to $18
million. Marion Thayer asked for $14,910 for her husband's baggage, but
nothing for his life. Charlotte Cardeza wanted $177,353 for her lost
baggage, which included 84 pairs of gloves and 33 pairs of shoes. But
most of the people who had traveled third-class had neither the
knowledge nor the means to hire a lawyer. They sought help from
organizations like the Women's Relief Fund.

A young English woman who had come to live with her mother in the U.S.
lost her $250 nest egg, without which her mother was unwilling to take
her in. "The committee gave her some money," reported the New York Sun,
"and one member employed her out of hand as a lady's maid."

The surviving crew were in little better financial condition. Their pay
stopped when the ship went down, and they returned to their homes, most
of them in Southampton, England, with nothing but the clothes on their
backs. In addition, the city lost 549 wage earners, whose dependants
expected to be partly compensated by a voluntary relief fund. However,
the fund announced in August 1912 that it had inadequate money to meet
all the claims.

A woman named Eileen Wilson recently told the BBC about her
grandfather, John Edward Puzey, a steward on the Titanic. He lost his
life, leaving a wife and two sons, Ms. Wilson recalled. "She was given
a few sovereigns and that was it. They were left in poverty."

Perhaps the most poignant story was that of the families of the
musicians, who were still playing their instruments when the ship went
down. Because they had been hired by an outside contractor, White Star
deemed them passengers rather than employees, which meant their
dependants were not entitled to workmen's compensation. That contention
was later upheld by a British court.

It wasn't until July 1916, more than four years after the Titanic sank,
that White Star and all the U.S. plaintiffs came to a settlement. White
Star agreed to pay $665,000 -- about $430 for each life lost on the
Titanic.
€ E-mail comments to cynthia.crossen () wsj com 1.
 


Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:cynthia.crossen () wsj com

Updated February 5, 2003




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