Trial Lawyers Lobby in Trouble?
The tort reformers among you are going to love this story. Just as it looks like there might be an opening to enact significant medical malpractice reform, it appears that one of the most powerful lobbying arms against reform is hemorrhaging money (gavel bang: Overlawyered). The Washington Times reports:
The American Association for Justice, the most prominent group representing plaintiffs’ attorneys, has seen a shake-up in its executive suite and has struggled to deal with what appears to be a mounting budget shortfall. To help it fight congressional efforts to make it harder for patients to sue doctors and lawyers, it recently sent out an extra solicitation to its members, asking them to fork over money for a lobbying campaign.The most striking evidence of its financial woes is a swift decline in income, which resulted in a more than $6.2 million deficit in its operating budget for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2008, the most recent year for which data are available.
The reason for the shortfall appears to be fewer members. Details after the jump.
Given the way that the recession has affected the legal industry as a whole, it is not entirely surprising that the American Association for Justice is dealing with a decline in its membership dues:
The biggest hit to its books was in membership dues, which dropped from $28.6 million in 2005 to $19.2 million in 2008, according to the annual AAJ financial report for that fiscal year filed with the Internal Revenue Service.“That is our number-one priority: to strengthen our membership,” said Joey Diaz, a member of the AAJ executive committee, speaking by phone from his law office in Madison, Miss. “We have a number of people working on membership and we have reversed that [downward] trend and are starting to move forward again.”
Has the recession really hit the medical malpractice industry as well? I imagine there are a lot of lawyers sitting on their couch right now that would gladly pay an AAJ membership fee, if the AAJ could point them in the direction of a full time, stable job. But it is a little hard to motivate people to lobby Congress when they’ve just been laid off or fear being laid off next.
Do trial lawyers have the financial muscle for another battle against tort reform?
Trial lawyers lobby sinks $6.2M in debt [Washington Times]
Financial woes at AAJ? [Overlawyered]
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Comments
4 for 5!
Now that's how it's done. Suck it!
- 1
1,
Congrats!
-3
Mighty decent of you, 3. Quite unexpected on this board. The rest of you dilatory, penurious and inane losers on this site could learn a little something from #3.
- 1
So let me get this straight the SEIU and other unions are running deficits and now the ambulance chasers are too.
What are they scared of? Oh that's right both realized they are a drag on the economy and most people hate them.
Good thing the Democrats are getting their ideas and are beholden to the clowns that can't even run their own shops in the black
The name "American Association for Justice" is ironic considering that trial lawyers are sycophants who leech the just deserts from the hard work of patriotic Americans.
Furthermore, while these parasites are not inane, nearly every one of them is penurious relative to my obscene salary.
JaKe,
Read your last sentence, edit, re-post.
-Concerned that your rep is maintained.
But JaKe, are they dilatory?
I don't think victums deserve any justice at all.
We need to close the courts so when a person is injured/defrauded/manipulated, the powerful vested interests that did so can laugh their asses off at the loser they screwed.
--John Roberts
And in other news, American Cockroaches For A Just Society, an advocacy group for cockroaches, is reporting that donations to its lobbying efforts aimed at outlawing Raid and other insecticides have fallen dramatically. Said Johnny Cockroach, lead fundraiser for the effort, "It seems like the more Raid they spray the fewer roaches there are and the fewer roaches there are the less money we raise. I just don't get it."
And finally, The New York Times is reporting today that when you don't put out honey you don't attract as many flies. It seems that the flies are drawn to the honey and that covering the honey leads the flies to return to their customary diet of dogshit and roadkill.
10-
You think the Plaintiff's lawyers are hurting financially?
HAHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHA.
You put a lot of effort into a post to tell people you are stupid and lack common sense.
This post is addressed to Commenter #7:
Please forgive my omission of "me &" before "my" in my original comment (#6). It is most regrettable that you choose to apply your elementary editing skills on a law blog rather than in the pursuit of obscene opulence.
No one can bring a lawsuit unless the plaintiff suffered some injury of some sort.
Instead of blaming the lawyers, you should blame the plaintiffs for standing up for themselves. Why don't they just take it?
I think it's very scummy for lawyers to represent the injured. Personally, like most T-14 grads, I represent a large corporation that frequently injures consumers, shareholders, etc. It offends me greatly when they fight back.
I've got a job for plaintiff's lawyer seeking work. Let's sue Coldplay, the most derivative band in the world. They have paid settlements to other musicians, most recently Joe Satriani. They must have ripped off a Tap song, after all we were England's loudest band.
ELIE MYSTAL MAKES A NERDY EXPRESSION AS HE SLIDES HIS BLACK HORSE COCK ALL DEEP IN DAVID LAT'S ASS, AND THEN THE GIRL WHAT'S HER FACE LICKS IT.
A decline in general dues doesn't mean plaintiff's lawyers are hurting. If and when there's a serious tort reform bill on the table, trust me, they'll mobilize and donate. Issue advocacy has been like this for at least a decade - you get people hyped up about a bill but very few of them convert into long term dues paying members.
6 haz potential.
A tsunami just hit American Samoa after an 8.3 earthquake in the pacific. Watch your ass Hawaii.
"No one can bring a lawsuit unless the plaintiff suffered some injury of some sort."
13 - get real...they can and do file suit sans injury.
this lobby is a bunch of penises.
Flounder
Walrus
Manatee
................................Mystal
trolling is a art
The problem is not plaintiff lawyers. The problem is juries comprised of idiots.
come on now elie.
whatever anyone's take is on the plaintiff's bar, i think we can all agree that the washington times doesn't "report" anything.
@10: Well played, sir. Although I think you could've stopped after paragraph one and still gotten the message across...
Elie - before you view every potential story through the lens of job losses, you should consider the lens' relevance to the story.
Notwithstanding the continuous fire drill on ATL, how many lawyers have actually lost their jobs? I have no idea, and this site has certainly never tried to look at job losses in the industry as a whole. Attributing a 33% loss of revenue to job losses, despite the clear implication that the decline began before the recession, is typical of the intellectual laziness that currently afflicts ATL.
Job losses and the recession are an important story, but they're not the ONLY story in the legal profession. It's time to stop using your recession-causes-X, don't-we-all-have-it-SO-tough template and start digging into stories.
PE,
Do you intend to die in the same manner as Governor Rockefeller?
JaKe
My editing skills are in use here because unlike you I never had to work. I made my money the old fashioned way, I inherited it.
-Still want you to keep your reputation, even though you appear to be illiterate and only got into a peer school through your father's connections
Elie, did you really cite the Washington TTTimes as an "objective" source of "news"????!?????? ROFL
Dear Lat,
You hired a guy that takes articles from the Washington Times and treats them as obvious truth without using his brain. I understand you are a conservative, but you must understand the intellectual barrenness of the Washington Times.
This begs the question: who is the bigger idiot? Ellie or Lat for refusing to fire him??
Dear Defense Bar,
Have fun justifying your jobs when people stop suing your clients because the laws write plaintiffs out of court.
Love,
Common F. Sense.
There are hundreds of trial lawyers who could solve that deficit by themselves. When the need comes they will come up with the money needed for a successful lobby.
Tort reform is a red herring. It's a tiny fraction of the health costs in the country, and in many states, the procedural bars to getting into court on med mal claims are quite stiff.
The deficit is a result of members' anger with the ousting that occurred in the executive committee.