July 2010 Archives

"Thirty-four years ago in California we enacted the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act. Since that time almost every physician has loved it and almost every lawyer has hated it. What we should be able to agree on, however, is that the frictional costs of our current legal system are spinning out of control and are increasingly interfering with the ability of that system to serve the people who depend on it for justice."

Richard Corlin, M.D., in Los Angeles Lawyer, July/August 2010

The pretty green serpentine rock on the ground in California ... isn't going to hurt anybody, unless they pick it up and grind it into powder and inhale the dust, which is true of a lot of rocks....the serpentine fuss is a teachable moment. Maybe Romero's constituents could ask her to propose a law to outlaw dumb laws that make us feel safe but do nothing to actually protect us.

Harvard University instructor David Ropeik, writing in the Los Angeles Times on July 27, 2010 about Senator Gloria Romero's legislation to drop serpentine as California's official state rock. Ropeik is the author of "How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts."

"US lawyers are treating this as the biggest all-you-can-eat buffet that has ever been laid out before them."

The Cato Institute's Walter Olson on the growing number of lawyers seeking to sue BP over the Gulf oil spill. The Times of London, 7-19-10

"The rock itself is benign -- unless you happen to be caught in an avalanche or get hit in the head by somebody throwing it."

California State Geologist John Parrish, talking about efforts to remove serpentine as the state rock over fears it contains asbestos. San Francisco Examiner, July 7, 2010

"California lawmakers should again get serious and enact meaningful class action and damage-award reforms, in special legislative session if necessary. This would be the best jobs bill and budget fix they could provide."

Op-Ed by Lawrence J. McQuillan and Hovannes Abramyan, researchers at the California-based Pacific Research Institute, in the L.A. Daily News, July 2, 2010