POLITICS

Legislature has not gone far enough in dealing with frivolous lawsuits

If the New Hampshire Legislature is nothing else, it is certainly myopic. It compartmentalizes issues rather than seeing the problem on a more global — and realistic — scale.

Take, for example, the issue of frivolous lawsuits.

During the last session, lawmakers finally attempted to address the issue, but only dealt with the most visible portion of it — those suits related to medical injury actions.

Faced with increasing insurance costs and convinced that malpractice suits were the major cause of that problem, as well as the inability to attract certain categories of medical professions, such as obstetricians, lawmakers filed a multitude of bills. Ultimately Senate Bill 214 was passed and signed into law.

SB 214’s “Intent” section states: “(The bill) affirms the intent of the general court to contain the costs of the medical injury reparations system, and to promote availability and affordability of insurance against liability for medical injury.”

It creates panels to review medical injury claims and a study committee to look at medical malpractice insurance rates. It also ended the review process that had previously been in place.

There are two problems with this legislation. The first is that there are no “teeth” in it.

There are no mandatory fines, no specific penalties and what sanctions are to be imposed, if any, are left up to the panel chairman.

While the House Judiciary Committee urged the full House to defeat other bills aimed at curbing frivolous medical lawsuits on the basis that SB 214 adequately handled the issue, a look at those killed bills, such as House Bill 473, sponsored by Rep. MaryAnn Blanchard and Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, both Democrats from Portsmouth, indicates marked differences.

HB 473 would have forced plaintiffs to post a $10,000 bond if they decided to go forward with medical injury cases a screening panel had indicated were frivolous. If that isn’t a disincentive to file a frivolous lawsuit, I don’t know what is.

The other problem with SB 214 is that it dealt with only one kind of frivolous lawsuit — those having to do with medical issues.

Every day there are frivolous lawsuits filed by corporations attempting to enforce illegal employee confidentiality agreements or suits by individuals who think the plumber, electrician or carpenter they hired failed to deliver work they wanted even though it was not specified in the contract.

Newspapers are sued because someone did not like what was written about them, school systems are sued because a certain book appeared in the school library and towns are sued to slow up projects that abutters or business competitors just don’t want to see built.

In today’s litigious society, people sue for anything and everything, and there is absolutely no screening system for those suits. The cost to the public of having to hire municipal attorneys, more judges and more clerical help to try to move these case through a court system clogged with these kinds of cases is staggering.

While frivolous medical injury suits are certainly a problem, the larger problem is frivolous lawsuits in general. If the New Hampshire Legislature is serious about not only helping the medical establishment, but the public as a whole, it needs to give real thought to legislation that sets up screening panels with real clout to review all questionable legal actions.

Shir Haberman is the managing editor for news at the Portsmouth Herald.