Adam Liptak on Thomas Geoghegan's "See You in Court"
This week, New York Times journalist Adam Liptak wrote in the International Herald Tribune about Chicago labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan's new book "See You in Court." Responding to and reconceptualizing calls for tort reform, Geoghegan argues that "[w]e have to bring back predictability in the law," and, in Liptak's words, "bemoans the rise of tort claims, lawsuits over injuries that can give rise to enormous jury verdicts."
But . . . Geoghegan blames conservative legal theorists and big business, not plaintiffs' lawyers and the rise of the regulatory state.
The reason there is so much tort litigation, Geoghegan says, is that workers and others no longer have contracts they can enforce. Lacking contracts, they are reduced to making wild allegations and asking for extravagant damages in suits that mostly fail but that sometimes pay off like a lottery ticket. . . .
The move from labor law to employment litigation — from contract to tort, in the legal jargon — injected all sorts of expense and unpredictability into a process that used to be straightforward and relatively humane.
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