HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM GOVERNMENT BAN ON LAWSUITS AND DAMAGES

Responsibility and accountability – even for the powerful – are rooted into the core of our legal system. This country’s founders knew that a democracy needs a court system that empowers people to protect themselves by holding the powerful to account. That’s why the U.S. Constitution and the Alabama Constitution guarantees each person the right to a trial by jury. The founders feared unaccountable power in the form of the King of England against his “subjects”.  21^st Century America may not have a king, but it does have billion dollar corporations touching every part of every person’s life. These corporations now seek the kind of unaccountable power our founders sought to protect against, and they’re seeking that power by destroying your constitutional right to a trial by jury.

Politicians who are in the pockets of large corporations and insurance companies have devised a plan specifically aimed at destroying our right to hold those in power accountable for their misdeeds. Their plan is to enact laws that will all but destroy your right to use the judicial system to protect yourself. They have introduced bills which, if passed, will enact arbitrary changes to courts all across the country, including:

• Limiting compensation for injuries caused by medical professionals. Including doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, and medical device manufacturers, to $250,000.00, regardless of how much that injury devastated your life or the extent of malfeasance by the medical professional or company.  The Alabama legislature has more than once passed bills to cap damages in medical negligence cases.  Each time, Alabama’s Supreme Court has said the caps violate the right to trial by jury and declared it unconstitutional.  The reasoning is clear- that right to a jury of your peers inviolate.  In addition there is no medical costs emergency.  According to CMC, Medical negligence costs are only 0.2% of our total health care costs.   The Harvard School of Medicine found that 18% almost 1/5  of patients are harmed during the course of their medical care.  Health care costs will increase with caps according to a Northwestern University and the University of Illinois study.  I have articles I can send you about these studies.
• Eliminating class-action law suits, which would essentially destroy the ability to bring the kinds of cases that keep us safe. If you and a number of other people are damaged by the action of a corporation, instead of having a streamlined method to address all the claims in one action, each would have to retain lawyers and pursue the remedy. It would not be cost effective for you or the defendant.
• Eliminate Individual States Law regarding lawsuits and forcing all cases to Federal Court.  This bill will take away our states’ rights for remedies and clog the already clogged federal system.
• Allowing insurance companies to make “payments” rather than paying full compensation.  They want to spread your compensation over time.  Why?  Not to help you but to contain their costs- and their obligations.

Therefore, we must tell our government to put people first and stop trampling on our rights.  Javerbaum Wurgaft has been protecting citizens of New Jersey and New York by demanding that everyone is treated fairly, regardless of gender, race, or economic status. Please join us in demanding that Congress do the same. We must band together and contact our representatives to demand they say NO to these outrageous attacks on our rights. Go to each link below and tell them NO!

Billy Cunningham