Greedy Trial Lawyer
Candidate For Florida Governor Babbles Incoherently Before Florida Chamber Of Commerce Trustees
Category: In Your Face
OK. Maybe what came out of Tom Gallagher's mouth was in English and understandable. But, it was a bucket of Tort Reform gibberish. The man has declared open war on the rights of injured victims to seek compensation in our system of justice.
One of his biggest targets is the slip-and-fall premises case. Mr. Tom claims the present court rules on these cases are unfair to the business owner, frequently a supermarket. He thinks the injured patron should be required to prove more in order to permit a jury to determine whether the supermarket's negligence created or permitted the dangerous liquid to be on the floor. The problem is that his thinking is dervied from the Tort Reform Hymnal, not reality.
Consider the ways things are in the real world, Mr. Tom. A supermarket does everything in its power to keep the attention of the shopper on the thousands of products and advertising displays, not on the floor. It gives the shopper a cart that is soon filled with groceries which obstruct any possible view of the floor immediately ahead of the shopper. It keeps its smooth floors polished so that if any liquid happens to be on them there is virtually a zero coefficient of friction. It stocks just about every liquid known to man except gasoline and encourages every shopper to handle as many of the containers as possible. Its employees actually water down vegetables and fruit multiple times a day. Its employees are the only persons who supposedly inspect the floors periodically for spills of liquids.
When a shopper's foot steps in a puddle on a supermarket floor, a significant injury often occurs. In almost every situation the shopper is embarrassed and wants to exit the store or head to an emergency room as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the supermarket employees busily remove the liquid from the floor without taking photographs or otherwise documenting the size or location of the spill. The store employees never investigate to determine where the spill or leak came from and fail to even record the name of any other patrons who have witnessed the spill on the floor or the fall. Basically, the supermarket destroys the evidence about as fast as it can while killing the customer with kindness.
That, Mr. Tom, is why the supermarket should be required to come forward with some facts to establish it did not contribute to the injury and why the injured victim is not able to get a fair trial otherwise.
If you are elected governor, Mr. Tom, will you be named the Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year? You certainly should be in the running.
Excerpts from Insurance Journal piece:
A lack of meaningful tort reform in Florida has added unnecessary expenses to the insurance and healthcare industries in Florida, CFO Tom Gallagher told the Coral Springs, Fla. Chamber of Commerce Board of Trustees. One of two Republican candidates running for governor, Gallagher unveiled a detailed tort reform plan he claimed will "fix Florida's broken civil justice system."As part of his plan Gallagher supports initiating premises liability reform. This would abandon a long-standing doctrine established in 2001 in the Supreme Court Owens v. Publix case, which adopted a rule in slip-and-fall cases that a business is liable for accidents occurring on its property unless the business can prove otherwise.
"That is unfair. In every case, the burden of proof should be on the plaintiff to show that the defendant did wrong," Gallagher said. "Florida law should be amended so that businesses will only be liable in slip-and-fall cases if the plaintiff can prove that the business knew or should have known of the dangerous condition that led to the plaintiff's harm.
"These days, litigation is too often legally-sanctioned extortion," he said. "
Gallagher's plan calls for abolishing joint and several liability; reforming class action litigation to discourage venue shopping for class action lawsuits; ensuring fair and accurate testimony by requiring state licensure of expert witnesses: Reforming premises liability so that property owners are not held liable for the actions of unassociated third-parties; and creating a "Business Court," providing a streamlined process for resolving commercial disputes devoted entirely to complex business litigation.
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