Editor’s note: This commentary is by Keith Stern, who is the owner for 30 years of Stern’s Quality Produce, a retail and wholesale business in White River Junction. He was an independent candidate for U.S. Senate and participated in the Republican primary for U.S. representative. He served many years on the Design Review Board in Springfield, where he lives.
Have you seen an attorney ad on TV soliciting for malpractice suits, something like if you or a loved one were killed using this evil product we will be glad to sue the pants off the negligent company because we care about you. Every one of these cases justified or not is ultimately costing the consumer of that product. The system needs reforming.
The tort system in this country works to an extent, but the process can be cumbersome, take too long especially for someone who needs money because of bills not covered by insurance or forced to take unpaid time off from work, expensive for both plaintiffs and defendants, and too often relies on people who don’t have the necessary information to make an informed decision. Too often lawyers will seek people or businesses involved with the defendant who had no part in the malpractice/negligence but will look for insurance companies to throw some money toward the plaintiff to avoid long drawn out litigation.
It would be the paralegal’s job to research pertinent laws, request other pertinent information that may exist, and to contact a panel of professionals from the defendant’s profession or as close to possible with no relationship with either party.
My system eliminates the need for lawyers and judges, cases would be litigated in weeks rather than months or sometimes years, the decisions would be made by people who could make informed decisions, the cost to litigate would be negligible to nothing for both parties, and victims of negligence or malpractice could keep their settlements rather than sharing a third or more with their attorneys and witnesses paid to testify on their behalves.
So this is how my system is planned: Someone is or feels that they were injured, wronged, and/ or financially hurt by a business or professional. That person would file a complaint in civil court. The court clerk would look at it and see the type of case and separate it from other types of civil cases such as auto accident claims. He or she would read the complaint, set a time for the hearing, and notify both parties. The case would then be administered by a paralegal trained specifically to handle the cases from start to finish. It would be the paralegal’s job to research pertinent laws, request other pertinent information that may exist, and to contact a panel of professionals from the defendant’s profession or as close to possible with no relationship with either party. They can readily understand the information and make an informed decision with no personal bias. There won’t be any precedent set that can affect future cases and the panel would be made up of people with no prior contact with either party to eliminate influence from those perspectives.
This plan could be tested using college students, retired attorneys and former court clerks by taking transcripts of actual cases and then use the information to do mock trials and analyze the results. If proven to be as effective as I believe and implemented in Vermont, we could solicit businesses with extremely high malpractice/ business liability insurance costs and offer them a less expensive approach. It may be a significant creator of high paying jobs for Vermont.
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