Seattle
Response
To those who may critique the KCBA’s recent drug policy proposal, it is important to eschew any preconceived notions about alternatives to the “War on Drugs” and it is even more important to read very carefully the voluminous material supporting the KCBA’s recently-adopted drug policy resolution--currently available on the KCBA website--which has been assembled over the last three years by the scores of professionals and civic leaders who volunteered their time to participate in the many working groups of the KCBA Drug Policy Project. It is clear that the writer had done neither.
In response to the writer’s principal concerns:
The Current System Has Failed. The KCBA agrees that the use of drugs, both legal and illegal, can be debilitating to the mental and physical health of the user. Where the use of such drugs has increased markedly during the last three decades of the “War on Drugs,” however, it is clear that current drug control policies have failed. In the last decade alone, the number of regular users of illegal drugs has increased from 12 million to 20 million. Rather than continuing to waste taxpayers’ money on a policy that has failed to reduce drug use, the KCBA is recommending a new approach.
Stricter Controls Likely Reduce Dangers. Persons under the influence of drugs, including alcohol, do present a real danger to others when driving or otherwise behaving irresponsibly. The KCBA is not proposing any changes to current civil and criminal processes that are employed to hold individuals accountable for conduct that harms other persons and/or their property, whether or not such conduct is influenced by drug use. Rather, the KCBA is proposing stricter controls over psychoactive substances themselves, by undercutting the violent black markets, by restricting access to drugs by young people and by greatly expanding treatment opportunities. Such restrictions, together with the kind of aggressive, public-health-oriented, counter-advertising strategy that has been effective recently in reducing tobacco use and drunken driving, would likely result in reduced injury and death arising from driving under the influence and other such reckless behavior.
Treatment Works. Drug addiction treatment is not only effective, but MUCH less expensive than arrest, prosecution and incarceration, which have been conclusively shown to be counterproductive to the goal of reducing drug abuse. However, current U.S. drug policies do not allow certain addiction treatment modalities for the sizeable cohort of chronic, late-stage drug addicts who consume the vast bulk of illegal drugs and principally sustain the violent black market. Such treatment modalities, including medically-supervised drug prescription programs, have already proven to be very effective in Europe and elsewhere in reducing public disorder, reducing overdoses and the spread of disease, reducing economic crimes that support addiction, reducing public costs, reducing youth initiation of “hard” drugs, reducing the quantity of harmful drugs consumed and reducing addiction itself. The KCBA believes it is time that such proven methods be introduced in the United States.
Drug Dealers are Part of the Current System. The incentives to become a drug “dealer” today are a direct result of the artificially high prices arising from drug prohibition, a policy that has guaranteed the existence of a flourishing black market that preys on children. The KCBA is proposing a new legal framework of drug control that would render the black market unprofitable and would better restrict access by young persons to psychoactive substances. By reducing the crime problem that has inevitably resulted from the policy of drug prohibition, the KCBA asserts that the state and society at large will finally have the resources and attention to address the problem of drug abuse.
An Alternative Legal Framework is Needed. As the KCBA found three years ago, the use of criminal sanctions has not reduced drug abuse, has not reduced crime related to drugs and has not reduced public costs arising from each, as well as fostering more crime, eroding public health, clogging the courts, compromising civil rights, disproportionately affecting minorities and the poor and fostering corruption among public officials. After three years of intensive work, the KCBA and its coalition of professional and civic groups is now outlining the parameters of an alternative legal framework of drug control that will more effective achieve the core objectives of saving taxpayer dollars, putting the criminal gangs out of business, protecting children better and improving the public health. We heartily welcome informed and unprejudiced comment about the KCBA proposal as we begin a public conversation about this important area of public policy.
Roger Goodman,
KCBA’s Drug Policy Director
Pro-I-330 Position Questioned
I read with chagrin Mary Spillane’s pro I-330 article in the February issue of the Bar Bulletin. Apart from promoting the empirically false underpinnings of I-330, Ms. Spillane sadly positions herself as an insurance industry advocate against her own profession, an exercise which ought to concern all lawyers.
I-330’s proposed limits on plaintiff’s attorney fees represents an extraordinary attack on a narrow segment of our profession for the betterment of one of the most financially powerful industries in the country. Ms. Spillane’s tepid effort to defend the fee limitation by couching it in terms of Ômore money for claimants’ resolutely ignores the substantial financial risks plaintiff’s attorneys take in contingent fee cases and the potential for further limiting access to our civil courts which seems to be a mainstay theme of private industry in America today.
More concerning is Ms. Spillane’s advocacy, presumably on behalf of a client of her own firm (Physician’s Insurance which enjoyed record profits in 2004), against some of those attorneys with whom lawyers in her firm deal on a regular basis. Intruding squarely into the middle of the attorney-client relationship, Ms. Spillane purports to know a priori the particulars of contingent fee agreements and how they are actually effected in all medical negligence cases. The inherent mixture of condensation and paternalism inherent in the notion that Ôplaintiff’s attorneys are making too much money because the insurance industry tells me so’ is as dismal in concept as it is in print.
How would Ms. Spillane react to a WSTLA funded effort to have the Washington legislature cap medical negligence fees in defense firms in an effort to ease the burden on insurers and return a greater portion of the money spent in litigation of such cases to the injured person? After all, one of the few certitudes of medical negligence litigation is that firms like Ms. Spillane’s will collect their money regardless of outcome.
All attorneys are medical consumers and ought to be concerned with protecting fundamental societal interests, including access to affordable medical care. That is best done by championing positions founded on fact and which honor both the legal profession and common sense. Ms. Spillane’s position does neither. It is instead an intramural attack that impliedly denigrates the work of some of our profession’s most dedicated advocates.
Let me add, that I have high regard for Ms. Spillane’s legal abilities. I have been a lawyer for 20 years in King County and spent nearly 14 years doing insurance defense work, including medical negligence defense (at Karr Tuttle Campbell) before commencing a plaintiffs’ practice with my current partners, which does not focus on with medical negligence cases.
Bruce Clark
Seattle
Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act Article Criticized
It was startling to see a timely article on the “Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act” in your February 2005 edition only to find it to be a diatribe by two trial lawyers with the all-too-common animus towards anyone who would dare criticize the tort legal system as typically practiced in the United States.
Attorneys Murray and Greaney profess to find the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act “meritworthy”, but then vent their respective spleen on anyone who would criticize the jury system that is so well liked by plaintiff lawyers like themselves. Indeed, they argue, it is “dangerous” to even speak critically of any part of our court system utilized by plaintiff lawyers because to do so would “shake public belief in institutions we should respect.”
It is breathtaking that in this country we can call President Bush a “Nazi,” but woe be to anyone who would criticize our judicial system, at least that part of it favored by plaintiff lawyers. If the profession is relying on these two to argue for respect for lawyers, the battle is clearly lost.
I hate to break the news to Attorneys Murray and Greaney, but Phillip K. Howard and his organization Common Good are at the center of constructive critical thinking on judicial reform today. They have the ear of Congress, and not just the R’s. And yes, Common Good is indeed non-partisan.
You don’t get former presidential candidate George McGovern and former Attorney General Griffin Bell (under President Carter) on your advisory board by being part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. If lawyers really want to understand their problem, a good starting place would be to check out “cgood.org” and Howard’s most prominent books, The Death of Common Sense and The Collapse of the Common Good.
John Bundy
Seattle
Response
The authors obviously do not dispute that Common Good is entitled to its voice in the public debate regarding tort reform. Our point is simply that its criticism is based on isolated cases, not representative of the norm, which are then advanced as reasons for large-scale tort reform.
Two consistent themes permeate their analysis, both of which are “dangerous” in that they substitute polemics for rational debate and empirical analysis.
The first is a frontal assault on the American judiciary, not only as meek and timid, but, worse, as incompetent and unprincipled. The unstated premise is that judges are shills for the plaintiffs’ bar.
The second explicit premise, also advanced as a basis for all manner of tort reform, is that jurors are by-and-large dumb, lazy, lack common sense and are easily fooled by lawyers who are smarter than they are. Trial lawyers, for plaintiffs and defendants alike, know that both of these themes are untrue.
James R. Murray
Seattle
William F. Greaney
Washington D.C.
Settlement GAL Article Appreciated
Thanks to Joan Middleton and the Bar Bulletin for writing and running such an accurate and thoughtful article on the role of Settlement Guardians ad Litem in our state. This subject remains a bit of a mystery, even to some who frequently practice in the personal injury area. Any information provided such as this is most helpful to all.
Particularly, I appreciated your addressing the myth that minor settlement proceeds are available for the parents to use or manage as they see fit. Regretfully this expectation has led to past abuses, such that the PI attorney and the SGAL need to be exceptionally clear on the fact that the funds, once paid, are the child’s to be protected and not those of the parents, for their own use, risk or benefit.
Again, thank you providing for such a positive, informative and helpful article.
Commissioner Stephen Gaddis
Seattle
