LOW JURY VERDICTS AND PENDULUMS

POLITICAL AND LEGAL PENDULUMS
PART 1

On Tuesday, December 7, 2010, President Barack Obama cut a tax deal with Congressional Republicans to keep the Bush tax cuts intact for all Americans.

There has been an intense debate and it was President Obama’s position that the tax cuts should only be extended for people making under $250,000 per year. However, given the most recent elections in which, by his own acknowledgment, his party took a shellacking by the Republicans, President Obama faced the hard political reality that the only way the tax cut would stay in effect for middle class Americans, was if he agreed to allow it to also stay in effect for those making above $250,000 per year. Therefore, for at least the next two years, the Bush tax cuts will apparently remain in place.

This got me thinking about how the political pendulum swings in America. In 2000, President George W. Bush was elected President. He served for eight years. A lot of people thought that his policies went too far to the right with the invasion of Iraq and the long term wars that we are still engaged in defending our freedoms. Many would argue that the political swing was too far to the right under Bush.

Then President Obama is elected in 2008. President Obama proceeds to help pass ObamaCare, a comprehensive health care for most Americans. President Obama presided over a lot of government sponsored programs that greatly increased the national debt. Objectively, one could say that President Obama pushed the pendulum too far to the left.

Now, after the most recent congressional elections in 2010, the people have spoken. Obama went too far left for many Americans. I think you are going to see, come January, that President Obama’s State of the Union address will move to the political center. I think you will see that he will become a great and forceful spokesmen for a balanced budget and budget deficit reduction.

Right in the political center.

In short, the political pendulum went from the far right to the far left and is now moving back to the center where it probably belongs.

In the same way, long long ago, when I was a young attorney, and just starting out as a lawyer, about 30 years ago, the legal pendulum was pretty victim oriented. By that I mean, juries could by and large be counted on to give decent to large awards for personal injuries. Sometimes the awards were probably overly generous, given the nature of the victim’s claims. There was a feeling back then that juries watched out for a victim in an auto accident, a wrongful death claim, or a case where someone had to have surgery due to the carelessness or negligence of another. There, but for the grace of God go I, seemed to be the prevailing philosophy in terms of huge jury verdicts. Jury verdicts were victim oriented.

Then came massive assaults on the jury system, including tort reform proposals. The general public was aghast at some of the jury verdicts and the amounts of money that were given to people suing…to be continued tomorrow.