News Media Distorts View of Verdicts, Legal System
$4.9 billion dollar verdict against General Motors. $144.8 billion against the tobacco industry in a Florida class action. $253 million to the widow of a man killed by Vioxx. The media loves to jump on these figuers, resulting in plaintiff's verdicts being considerably overrepresented. Consider the following cases:
**Every major newspapaper in the country placed the 1999 $4.9 billion dollar compensatory and punitive damage award against GM on behalf of six people burned when the gas tank of their Chevy Malibu exploded after a rear end collision.
Only two of those papers ran a front page story on the judge's reduction of the award to $1.2 billion.
Four of those papers briefly mentioned that the case settled for an undisclosed sum in 2003 while the case was on appeal.
**All media jumped on a jury's $144.8 billion punitive damage award agianst big tobacco in Florida. The countries major newspapars made it a headline story.
When the appeals court overturned the award, only two of those newspapers printed front page reports.
**A Texas jury awards $253 million to the widow of a man killed by Vioxx, including a $229 million dollar punitive award. All major news media cover the story in great detail.
The majority of accounts of the trial failed to include the fact that Texas law would reduce the punitive verdict to about $1.6 million.
It it this type of irresponsible journalism that fuels the fire of tort reformists everywhere. Proponents of reform hang their hats on the announcement of "jackpot justice" verdicts, and fail to mention that nearly all big verdicts are reduced or overturned down the road.
An excerpt from the LA Times article discussing this problem highlights my point:
"From the media's perspective, extremes are news," New York University law professor Stephen Gillers said. The humdrum workings of the legal sustem, with is minor traffice cases and contract disputes, he said, is "completely distorted by the emphasis on what I would call the grotesque or extreme cases."