The facts of the case are as follows: Ms. Maya Normousbutt, a resident of Brighton, was taking her kids to the corn maze and haunted house at Murray Farms, also located in Brighton, when her parked vehicle was struck by another car driven by a Mr. Dick Timoneous, of nearby Northglenn.
Mr. Timoneous was placing a note on Ms. Normousbutt’s car when she returned to the parking lot and discovered that the accident had occurred.
Over the course of the next several weeks, she obtained several estimates for the damage, her insurance company paid for the repairs, and, during a meeting at her brother’s law office that he helped to arrange, she, the defendant, and all insurance companies involved made an agreement to resolve all remaining issues in the lawsuit that had been filed on her behalf to effect recovery of damages.
Republican Study Group attorney Moe Barten presented this argument to the Judge during the hearing:
“We have a system in America built up based on the British tradition over 200 years of due process and fairness, where people that — that do bad things or, in this case, a person that’s responsible for a bad accident, we want to hold them responsible, do what we can to make the liable parties pay for the damages.
I’m speaking now totally for myself. I’m not speaking for the Republican Party. I’m not speaking for anybody in the America but myself, but I’m ashamed of what happened in that attorney’s office yesterday.
I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private individual can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case, a $2000 shakedown, with an attorney, who is legitimately conducting a investigation and has every right to do so to protect the interests of his client, participating in what amounts to a $2000 slush fund that’s unprecedented in our nation’s history, that’s got no legal standing, and which sets, I think, a terrible precedent for the future.”
Barten continued for several more minutes; unfortunately, the official transcript only records him as saying: “Harrumph, harrumph, harrumph” the entire time.
Near the end of the morning’s presentations Barten’s co-counsel, Bon Joehner, introduced a novel legal concept:
“I think the people responsible in the car accident-Mr. Timoneous and the federal government–should take full responsibility for what’s happening there…”
Ms. Normousbutt’s attorney, Harry Paratestes, Esq., offered a statement during the lunch recess:
“We are very disappointed at the RSG’s efforts to become involved in this case.
My client, and her insurance company, were hoping to create a simple way to avoid litigation so that all claims might be promptly settled; if the RSG prevails we will have years of legal battles ahead of us before anything can be resolved and the plaintiffs in this case can be made whole for the damage done to them by the responsible party.
You know, folks, all we’re trying to do is get paid back for getting her bumper fixed, and I have no idea why the RSG has a problem with that.
We also cannot understand why the taxpayer should be stuck with even one penny of the bill for fixing my client’s car, and we surely can’t figure out why Republicans would want the taxpayer to bail out Mr. Timoneous, or his insurer, for his bad driving. I mean, talk about moral hazard…
…After all, it’s not like Uncle Sam was behind the wheel that afternoon; it was Dick Timoneous.”
So, guess what, Gentle Reader: once again we’re using satire to make a larger point, and once again all the speeches were slightly modified from the actual words of Rush Limbaugh, Joe Barton, and John Boehner-and I figured I’d better bring this to your attention now because I know I did such a good job of “obfuscating” the names in the story that no one would probably ever figure it out if I didn’t.
And just for the record, there really is a Judge John T Bryan, and his Court was added to provide a very real location for this very fake story-and I hope he has a sense of humor about that-and even more importantly, I hope he realizes that nothing was said about him here, defamatory or otherwise, except to acknowledge his existence.
Finally: I just can not, for the life of me, figure out how Republican consultants gather around a conference table and say: “Hey, why don’t we try to stick this one on the taxpayer-and then make sure we tell the public how much we support that idea…loudly.”
WARNING – Blatant Self-Promotion Ahead: It’s Netroots Nation time once again, and the fine folks at Freedom To Marry have chosen me as a finalist for their Blog 4 Equality contest. If I am one of the chosen, it’s off to Vegas…in July. You can vote for that Don Davis guy here, which is my “in person” name, once every 24 hours, so vote early and often. Voting ends June 25th. Thanks very much, and we now return you to your regular programming.
But then again, I guess that’s why I’m a fake consultant, and they’re real ones.
…to do a story about law and steal from bart simpson at the same time?
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p>lots of fun, actually…
They should make oil companies that drill in the United States buy insurance against accidents.
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p>The insurance company should be a wholly owned subsidiary of the federal government.
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p>If that is not possible, then the insurance companies offering this must not be owned or controlled by the oil companies.
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p>Either way, if an insurance company is insuring you against X, they will inspect what you have, and force you to make it a “rubber pajamas and padded cell”-safe world in terms of X.
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p>As for settling out of court vs. going to trial, that is not what is important. It is neither better nor worse to use either approach.
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p>These court cases are about disputes concerning money and property. They are settled by either dismissal or by the plaintiff paying the defendant a sum of money.
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p>What matters is WHAT is done (the amount of the settlement) and not WHAT FORUM it is done at (a lawyer’s office, the White House, State Court, Federal Court).
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p>I like it.
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p>
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p>I hate it. Instead, require that the drilling operation is insured for $a dollars per estimated gallon of reserves for the well, and that any insurance company involved have $x in assets liquidable in a short time period and $y in assets liquidable in a longer time period. Choose $a to cover the cost of a cleanup like the BP one, and choose $x and $y and the time period appropriately.
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p>
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p>If the companies can’t all be insured at the same time because there’s not enough insurance to be had, so be it. The price of insurance will go up, drawing more investors in the market and encouraging both the insurers and the drillers to innovate safety and cleanup costs to drop the risk of damage, thereby reducing the cost of insurance. In the mean time, the cost of drilling for oil goes up, helping the market reflect the true cost and risk associated with the drilling.
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p>Oh, and btw, make the payouts for this kind of insurance have the highest priority in the case of a bankruptcy, and make sure that the regulations and regulators can move quickly enough to make the probability of bankruptcy very low by making sure that the insurance company has enough $x and $y (above).
…rewording to this proposal, which i really like as well–except, as you’ve noted, i’d prefer this be a government-regulated, not government-run, activity.
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p>there will always be enough insurance.
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p>the question is, at what premium?
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p>when the premium is too high, drilling will be limited in the riskiest areas.
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p>some possible ways to manipulate this?
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p>beware of “self-insurers”, beware of risky capital being held by the insurer, beware of lowball “risk assessments”, and beware of the ongoing battle to move liability to the public sector, as we do with nuclear power generation.
…paying compensation for damaging property interests is the important issue with which we need be concerned; if that can be done in a way that’s quicker and protects the interests of both sides, what reasonable person would object to that?