hot.coffee.2011.hdtv.xvid-fqm.avi

you better finish your little

cafe latte there they'll never let you

in with it why not

because they don't allow outside drinks

into the movie well we'll just see if we

can't get around that

honey

and then there is this tonight in

albuquerque an 81 year old woman has

been awarded 2.9 million dollars

after she sued mcdonald's claiming their

coffee was too hot

it seems she was holding a cup between

her legs while driving

i spoke to a lawyer we're suing for

millions

suing what form the coffee was too hot

i've been thinking of quitting work here

and suing big companies for a living

instead

suing has become a popular american

pastime i'd like to get in on some of

that easy money

a college student sued his college

because his roommate partied too much

a florida man sued because he got a bad

haircut

of course many of these lawsuits fail

but you might win

stella libac did because of a cup of

coffee

every minute they waste on this

privileged lawsuit they're not able to

waste on other

frivolous lawsuits like oh my coffee was

too hot it's

coughing the woman she purchased the

coffee and she spelled it on herself

i mean it wasn't like the mcdonald's

employee took the coffee

threw it on her now that and it's up

then she would have a lawsuit

it's just people just are greedy and

want money and

they'll do anything to get it

i think many americans have a

fundamentally

wrong perception of the civil justice

system they think that the system is

flooded with frivolous lawsuits

jackpot justice predatory trial lawyers

at it again

junk lawsuits over frivolous injuries

lawsuit lottery and jackpot justice and

frivolous lawsuits these were

bumper sticker phrases that were easy to

market

and use to move public sentiment

away from a strong civil justice system

the whole

issue is the industry does not want

the public generally to have access to

the courts

so there's all of these devices and

methods

that business has used to keep consumers

out of the courtroom

my mother at 79 was very active

she drove she drove well

she very seldom dropped anything she

very seldom spilled anything

and so that uh

for her age at 79 years old i thought

she would she was remarkable

and she had been working full time just

about until about a week before this all

happened

my name is charles allen i'd like to

introduce my wife judy

and her mother stella liebeck the woman

who was burned by a cup of scalding hot

mcdonald's coffee three years ago

she cannot speak to do a confidentiality

agreement that she signed

but judy and i have no such agreement

i am just astounded at how many

people are aware of this case

and how many people have a distorted

view of the case

it doesn't matter where i am or who i

speak to oh yeah i know all about that

and well what do you know i got this

picture in my mind that she actually

pulled up

maybe took the coffee and dumped it

i think she went through the

drive-through she was driving the car

tried to drive and drink it at the same

time and then the lid might have popped

open and it spilled on her lap

added between her legs spilled in her

lap it was too hot

and then sued mcdonald's for millions of

dollars

and i'll say what would you say if i

told you she wasn't driving

oh no she was driving what would you say

if i told you

that's the wrong report and she was not

driving she was in the parking lot

she was in the passenger seat my nephew

was driving

so we had just dropped off my uncle at

the airport

and went to the nearest mcdonald's that

i knew of and

this was it so pulled up

she ordered coffee with her value meal

and i knew she liked cream and sugar in

it

there was no place in in my 1989 ford

probe

everything slope there were no cup

holders in that car

did i get cream and sugar it's in the

bag thank you

i pulled out of here knowing that we i

needed to get organized if i was going

to be eating and driving

and i knew she wanted to put her cream

and sugar in the coffee so pretty much

pulled right here

almost exactly this spot and

handed her a coffee or had already done

that and

so we just went about organizing

and short period after that she

started screaming i wanted to get the

top off to put cream and sugar in so i

put it

between my knees to steady it with this

hand

trying to get the top off and it just

went

hey you guys show me the burns yeah what

yeah would that change your mind at all

wow yes if i saw injuries like that i

would

definitely take a different view of it

from what i hear from the media

oh my gosh

excruciating pain

i was burned so severely that they

didn't think i would live

i'm a nurse and i was horrified at the

type of injuries that she had sustained

the skin grafts and the pieces that were

still ongoing

so it was kind of a shocker because it's

one thing to hear but it's another thing

to see

so it was kind of a oh my goodness

we could see the extent of this injury

so we started saying we need to ask

mcdonald's to pay for this

under no circumstances would she ever

sue or do anything like that

we thought that the company would take

care of medical and everything would be

done

and chuck and i wrote the letter to

mcdonald's

the very first thing we said is your

machine must be too hot so look at it

and fix it if it's

broken this must be an aberration it

must be an aberration but if it is your

sc

your policy we ask you to worry about

that policy because it's

uh you do not want to have this happen

to just one person

and then clearly it can't have happened

to just one person

we were extremely surprised when

mcdonald's

did not offer more than eight hundred

dollars on what was at that point a ten

thousand dollar medical problem

it's one of those things it's really

like if you ask people what the top ten

issues they care about you know the

economy health care

education the civil justice system never

even makes the top 20.

it's just not in in most people's radar

screen until something bad happens to

them and then

the first thing that most americans

think is that they should find a lawyer

when you are hurt by somebody harmed in

some way

and the person or the company that harms

you is negligent or

does this intentionally you have a right

to hold that wrongdoer accountable

and those are the civil courts that

handle those kinds of cases and that is

our civil justice system

it's a fundamental right that we have it

stems from the constitution from the

bill of rights

hey there kiddos the lesson today

is about our constitution and the

government's way

law making powers divided in three

legislative executive judiciary

forefathers

our judicial branch of government is one

of the very few places where an average

person

can actually go and confront a big

corporation on somewhat of a

level playing field you know the other

two branches of government are dominated

by money

and politics the judicial branch is not

because you can't whine and dine

juries but in the courts it's you

versus general motors but you versus you

know bank of america

and if you can present your information

and your complaint in an effective way

you have just as much likelihood of

winning as the general motors does

there's no other part of the government

where that's true

i got involved in the liebeck case by

way of invitation from reid morgan

who was lead counsel and once i met

reed and met stella liebeck and looked

at the evidence

you know they had my full attention

because the coffee

in question was brewed at temperatures

that would approximate

the temperature in your radiator after

you drive

from you know from your office to home

in

discovery we learned that in the

franchise

directives and manuals that the

franchisee was required to follow

that they had to have their their waters

at certain temperatures

and then they said that the holding

temperature should be 180

fahrenheit to 190 fahrenheit

hot liquid whether it's coffee or water

or any liquid like that

if it's in the range of 180 degrees or

hotter

if it is in contact with your skin for

more than just a few seconds it will

produce very serious burns if you're

lucky it'll produce a second degree burn

if you're

not as lucky you will get third degree

or full thickness burns requiring skin

grafting and surgery

if you add up the uh byron history

mcdonald's since january

of 1983 until march of 92

it's over 700 burn cases and that

doesn't surprise you does it

i can't say that i'm surprised or not

surprised i'm i'm glad the number's not

higher

all right i'm really pleased that it's

not more than that

i thought that was that was terrible

that he was so indifferent about it you

know

uh even if it was just one person that's

enough to pay attention to

i mean one person that spoke up

i'm sure there's more than that that was

damaged by hot coffee

but it was it's so easy to burn at that

temperature

and they were so indifferent about it

if you were to take a sip of that coffee

enough to where you could feel it go

down your throat

you can't do that 180 to 190 degrees can

you because you'll be burned you better

not do that you will get burned

we talked about different percentages of

how much was her fault

versus you know how much was mcdonald's

and we finally came to assign

twenty percent fault to mrs liebeck

because she had initially spilled the

coffee

and we assigned 80 of

the blame to mcdonald's because they had

a very long history of people being

injured

and they were so adamant that it was

such a trivial thing that they weren't

going to bother

to do anything other than just continue

to rake in the money

on their coffee sales and the fact that

it was their own records

really damned mcdonald's as far as i was

concerned because it was very obvious

that they knew there was a problem and

they were ignoring it completely

just totally disregarding the consumer

safety

we looked at the coffee sales on a daily

basis

and we figured about two days worth of

coffee sales we thought that that was

you know a fair amount and punitive

damages we

assessed at 2.7 million punitive damages

are very rare and they

have a specific purpose which is to

essentially change the behavior of the

wrongdoer

only way you can get the attention of a

big company

would be to make punitive damages

against them and this was a very small

punitive damage we thought

even though the amount was reduced later

i think the initial award certainly got

everybody's attention not necessarily in

a favorable

because i spilled a way in my lap and

bare it was cold

i'm going to sue guess i'm going to sue

the media in corporate america turned

a disadvantage into an advantage an

extreme advantage

as to how they dealt with this case and

its aftermath

i mean mrs liebeck became a joke

the jury function became a joke

notwithstanding the fact that we had 12

good hard-working new mexico citizens on

that jury

and it was a unanimous verdict but they

did a masterful job of taking this

this simple verdict and turning it

upside down as though

people like mrs liebeck are trying to

take economic advantage of the whole

legal system the tour reform groups they

love the mcdonald's coffee case

this was a perfect case for them because

it looked like it was frivolous

i had heard the word tort reform before

my mother was injured but i

i had never really understood what that

meant

a tort is a pastry

as far as i know it's also some type of

funding that the federal government has

done

uh for bailout money i believe oh i

thought that was tarp

no i think it's tort i have no idea what

a door it is

a tort is a piece of

it's a i think a tort is a piece of

bread that

looks like a hoagie roll but isn't

a hoagie roll so a tort is a harm it's

it's a

when someone uh commits a tort they have

harmed you

in some way i've heard the statement

toward reform do you know what it means

no tort reform would mean trying to

clean up

the the logistics of suing people or or

trying to make it easier or harder i'm

not quite sure which way tort reform

tends to work

well tour reform is a term drummed up by

some of the advertising people for the

business sector which is to limit

the likelihood that you can bring a

lawsuit it is

essentially laws that restrict people's

rights to go to court i don't think that

the term i'm not going to say it i i

just i won't say the word tort reform

the frame

that phrase because um i don't think

that

it is an accurate representation of

what's really going on

ralph nader calls it toward deform so i

guess reform is in the eyes of the

beholder

but if you want to change a system which

had become

in the late 1970s very very pro

plaintiff in the view of some

if you want to change it usually the

word reform is used

this big push to publicize the

mcdonald's case

came in the midst of an attempt to pass

federal legislation

that was going to limit the consumer's

right to go to court

it meant that there were going to be

caps on damages that there were going to

be all sorts of changes

in the rules of what you could do in

order to bring a case into court

and so there was this humongous campaign

by industry

attempting to affect juries but also

attempting to affect senators

and the mcdonald's case became the

poster child

for what's wrong with people going to

court and suing we looked at the

congressional hearings

about the tort reform bill and we found

that the most

common reference to justified tort

reform was a mcdonald's coffee case

there were not many statistical studies

the primary evidence was

everybody knows a mcdonald's coffee case

therefore we need tort reform

the lady goes through a fast food

restaurant puts coffee in her lap

burns her her legs ensues and gets a big

settlement

that in another of itself is enough to

tell you why we need to have tort reform

and in fact what happened was it did

pass the senate

and president bill clinton did veto it

this legislation is

arcane complex it has a lot of legalisms

and loopholes in it

but the real fact is it could have a

devastating impact

on innocent americans and so what

happened was corporate america sort of

went to a plan b

so they went to a lot of state

legislatures and asked the state

legislatures to pass laws that would

limit the rights and remedies

of individuals in various ways and they

were constantly on the attack because

they had so many

pr firms that they had hired to go out

and do their work in the different

states

a woman was awarded 2.9 million dollars

in a lawsuit against mcdonald

she spilled hot coffee on her lap while

sitting in her car and claimed it was

too hot

every day we hear about another

outrageous lawsuit

who pays you do tell the legislature we

can't afford another million dollar cup

of coffee

one of the most significant pr efforts

was spearheaded by the american tort

reform association atra

the american tort reform association is

a group of

several hundreds businesses and also

colleges and universities

and i'm their general counsel and they

are dedicated to try to see that there's

a fair and balanced legal system in the

united states

the american tort reform association was

formed in 1986

by about 300 major corporations

insurance companies chemical companies

oil and gas pharmaceutical companies

they're going to start advocating for

laws all around the country

to limit the liability of all their

members and so they hired a pr

firm and they came up with these groups

called citizens against lawsuit abuse

they were to give the impression that

these were just citizen groups that had

sprung up spontaneously

astroturf groups so they looked like

they were grassroots

groups but they really had no people in

them they were all run through the pr

firm that's what citizens against

lawsuit abuse was the tobacco industry

was actually funding a lot of this

that they would funnel money through a

washington dc

law firm called covington in burling

that would then distribute tobacco money

to some of these

citizens against lawsuit abuse groups

was there any distortions by people in

the media

by politicians by people who wanted tort

reform

sometimes stories were repeated and

repeated over and over again it happens

all the time

that were not true or they were

unfounded

i don't think it was intentional listen

to just a few cases

i hope i won't be repeating some that

maybe have already been told to you

in california man was using a public

telephone booth to place a call

an alleged drunk driver careened down

the street

lost control of her car and crashed into

the phone booth

now it's no surprise that the injured

man sued but you might be startled to

hear whom he sued the telephone company

and associated firms that's right

there's a telephone booth on the corner

of a very busy intersection in in los

angeles and this guy was standing inside

and he saw this car coming right at him

and he tried to get out of the

phone booth and the door stuck and the

reason that this was the fault of the

telephone company is that they've been

lots of other cases where this telephone

booth had been hit

by cars because it was in a very

dangerous position

and it hadn't been properly repaired so

the guy couldn't get out

and so he was hit inside the phone booth

he lost his leg he was extremely ill

you know it was not the source of real

humor the way reagan had portrayed it

and

so there are a lot of stories like that

for me you know not being a lawyer i'm a

journalist and i felt like

journalists had just really not done a

good job of covering and that they had

fallen for lots of

public relations ruses that they should

know better about

there was even a story of somebody

taking a lawn mower to trim a hedge

and there was a lawsuit and actually it

never occurred

so there was some scare tactics that

really didn't have basis in fact

i didn't take this job to sit around and

worry about getting sued if we don't

stop

lawsuit abuse i might not be able to do

my job and my job

just might be to save your life join the

jury

against lawsuit abuse was supposedly

just a group of business people

and community leaders who were acting on

their own when in fact

it was a carefully orchestrated campaign

orchestrated out of washington dc with

the help of people like karl rove

who had their own business and financial

interest

in pushing the agenda of tort reform and

making it look like it was a totally

spontaneous event

texas must end the junk lawsuits that

clog our courts and threaten our

producers

in texas in the mid 90s you had karl

rove and then candidate

bush come along and see that there was a

real political advantage

to talking about so-called torque reform

karl rove was

in the early 1990s a consultant for phil

morris for the tobacco industry he was

working for philip morris

and bush at the same time he was on the

phil mars payroll so he had a lot of

ties to these folks

rove saw that if he used tort reform and

if his

candidates ran on tort reform it would

make it that much easier for him

to open the pockets of the business

community and then once governor bush

was elected it was katy bar the door

they implemented

all of the things that interests like

insurance companies and the healthcare

industry and others

wanted in texas and so it's with great

pleasure

that i sign a cap on punitive damages

that will add certainty to the business

climate

and a lot of the people who had been his

biggest financial backers in texas

they followed him right to the white

house so he kept going

no one has ever been healed by a

frivolous lawsuit i urge the congress to

pass

medical liability reform our economy is

held back

by irresponsible class actions and

frivolous asbestos claims

and i urge congress to pass legal

reforms this year

because lawsuits are driving many good

doctors out of practice

leaving women in nearly 1500 american

counties without a single obgyn

i ask the congress to pass medical

liability reform this year

he was short reformer in chief he really

brought that issue to the center stage

in a way nobody else had ever done

too many good docs are getting out of

business too many ob

gyns aren't able to practice their their

love with women all across this country

we're a litigious society everybody's

suing it seems like

there are too many lawsuits in america

if you have the right words that evoke

your

whole system of thought and your way of

understanding an issue

and when that language is repeated over

and over the brain

changes the circuitry gets stronger

and can become permanent in my line of

work you got to keep repeating things

over

and over and over again for the truth to

sink in

to kind of catapult the propaganda

so they would get their message out

there and then

the public would pressure their local

legislators

to enact capstone damages and other

kinds of liability limits

so there was a direct link between the

pr that was done

and ultimately the passage of laws

everybody yeah all right

we got 16 candles we have to put in here

because you're 16 years old so pick up

one this has to be the top

to turn it around so that you have a

hold of this part

and then you're going to put it in up

there any place you want

you know put it there

all right okay now let me show you what

you need to do you need to take them

don't laugh

they're not gonna they're not gonna

laugh take off here i'll help you

i had no idea what tort reform was i had

no idea that there were caps on damages

here in nebraska

um prior to colin's case caps on damages

i think

is something that exists when they're

when there is misuse in the system so i

i would trust

just as someone has the right to access

the courts

uh there should be a body overseeing it

and regulating it and

and that's what a cap is a cap is

is public oversight on abuse it's a

limit for how much money you can get

from like the tobacco company that

killed your wife because of lung cancer

or

i don't know you can only sue your

doctor for so much right isn't it

because there's abuse and so you have to

set a limit

one of the most common so-called tort

reforms

is what's called caps on damages or

limits on the amount of money

that a jury or a judge can award to

somebody after they've been hurt

and won their case their opportunity to

get compensation is strictly limited

i i want to be honest with you i'm not

advocating uh caps on malpractice awards

which i believe uh i personally believe

can be unfair to people who've

been wrongfully harmed

wow you're a big helper i know that

i was 36 weeks along

pregnant with identical twin boys

and i noticed the night before

my regularly scheduled doctor's

appointment

that the movement would normally when

i'd go to bed

the babies would be really moving around

a lot and i noticed that

they weren't moving around very much and

i just kind of felt like you know

this is kind of weird and i i'm going to

the doctor in the morning i'll talk to

her about it

and i went in and i told her and she's

like well let's listen to the heartbeats

and she listened to the heartbeats

and um she said you know the heartbeats

are normal every you know it sounds

you know everything looks good and so i

was

reassured

it's really important to determine how

many placentas

when you're pregnant with twins that if

there's only one placenta then

it's a high-risk pregnancy so when i

went in

with my concern on monday it should have

been immediately followed up

with an ultrasound and you know stress

tests and had they done that they would

have seen what was happening was the

twin to twin transfusion syndrome

where one baby starts getting everything

and the other baby's getting nothing

the next day the movement was less and

then

the the next day the movement was even

less

and i became i started to become really

concerned

and i called the doctor's office and um

we're going to see dr

nola's partner he said come on let's go

do an ultrasound and he showed the

heartbeat

of one of the babies and it was so slow

it was

like almost gonna stop and he said you

know we there's not a lot of fluid

around

one of the babies and we need to deliver

the babies right away

colin suffered uh severe brain damage

to all areas of the brain they just said

it must have been from a lack of oxygen

or whatever but they didn't really say

how it happened or why it happened or

give us any further background and

i guess that that kind of led us to keep

asking questions and keep

looking for answers well i've got one

son that's perfectly normal he's a

you know a normal child i've got one son

who has severe brain damage and they

were

born at the same time you know what

happened here the girlies also never

knew that before they went to see dr

nola

she'd been in court before sued two

other times

both for malpractice according to court

records in 1987 and 1989

dr nola was accused of botching two

pelvic operations

it appears both cases were settled

secretly but legally out of court

at trial it came out that the injury was

caused by

a lack of blood flow from the placenta

through the cord

and oxygen depletion of the brain for

five to eight minutes

is what caused the damage so not knowing

i mean looking back

all that time was so critical you know

it was i mean had they just you know

delivered them right away

and the nurses testified that the doctor

had called over

to the hospital and they had the or

prepared and ready

but the doctors weren't there you know

you just start thinking

all these things and why didn't they do

an ultrasound on that

monday you know and then you know i went

through

for about three years of why didn't i

just ask you know i kind of blamed

myself for a while um

you know but you you just want to change

what happened and

knowing that it was preventable

the economist at the time said that he

would need six million dollars

at the time of the trial for him to have

enough money

to take care of him for the rest of his

all right here we life

in most instances when you have a

lawsuit where a cap statute is involved

the jury doesn't know that there's a cap

statute

so if the jury renders an award which is

higher than

the cap statute the trial judge after

the trial

then reduces the verdict to the amount

of the cap

and so it actually it takes away the

power of the

jury to make a determination as to what

a fair and reasonable amount should be

for damages that's in the bill of rights

that juries not legislators

get to determine questions of fact in

the courtroom

and one of the most important issues of

fact decided in a civil jury trial

is what the appropriate damages are to

compensate someone who has been

injured due to the fault of another you

would agree with that

i don't disagree with that so so why

does the u.s

chamber spend so much money trying to

convince

us that we know more

about the value of someone's injury or

death

than the people who elected us to

congress who go into jury boxes

all over this country under the seventh

amendment to the

bill of rights the judge ruled that the

cap

here in nebraska was unconstitutional

that it violated your rights to a jury

trial

and then the doctors and the insurance

company appealed

the case to the nebraska supreme court

and the nebraska supreme court came back

and found the cap constitutional

i've been involved in the tort reform

issues in nebraska for a long time but

most recently as a member of the

professional liability committee of the

nebraska medical association

and sub and subsequent to that the

colorado physicians insurance company

which is the major malpractice carrier

for this region in nebraska

we have a total cap that includes all

damages whether it be economic or

non-economic damages

so caps on damages can be three kinds

there can be caps on punitive damages

in some states there's caps on

non-economic damages in many states and

in a very

very few states there can be caps on the

entire amount that a plaintiff can get

economic damages you can think about

those as your out-of-pocket costs

they're your health care expenses

your lost wages and non-economic damages

are for pain suffering the loss of

enjoyment of life

the harm that's been done to them that

is difficult to measure

in money but there needs to be some

reason when it comes to non-economic

damages in the system

and that's why i proposed a hard cap of

250 000

on non-economic damages

i think a cap on on economic damages of

250

000 makes some sense for most of the

states in the united states

because there's such a soft and squishy

type of of damages and difficult to

determine

i think that makes some sense it's an

arbitrary number

that bears no relationship to the harm

that the planet have suffered

and also it has a disproportionate

impact

on people in certain situations if

you've been blinded

permanently disabled disfigured in some

way

or your woman in your reproductive

system has been harmed in some way

those injuries are non-economic in

nature

and someone deserves to be compensated

for that

they're identical twins but there's

nothing really very identical about them

i mean conor's a

pretty much a normal boy i mean he grew

up

and played baseball and soccer and

you know just did what boys normally do

and

colin on the other hand he grew up first

surgery i think was when he was one

one he had he had to have eye surgery

there was optical nerve damage

in the brain injury part of the brain

injury so he doesn't see real well

and then he started having to go to

therapy when it's about two i think we

started taking

therapy and that was pretty intense and

they finally got him to where he could

hold his head up and then where he could

sit up

and then as he he grew older he's

obviously

mentally delayed he's he he didn't even

know the days of the week

the jury heard the evidence and they

said okay well

we're 5.6 million i think is probably

what the

what he needs and that was close close

we could have made that work i mean

that would be enough money that he'd

have people to take care of him if we're

gone or whatever

he had been okay for the rest of his

life and then the cap comes in and says

no

no no no that's not right

you get this amount of money and then

you know pay your lawyers out of that

and pay your

some medical bills and so colin ends up

with a few hundred thousand dollars and

so what happens is then he goes on the

medicaid

and the taxpayers have to pay pick up

the bill for his care

dad dad what it's far in the park

it is is getting your hand all dirty no

oh it didn't broke look at that it's not

just an economic need there are moral

issues involved here

and what a cap does is it relieves the

wrongdoer often a company

or a health care provider of the

responsibility they have

for the damage that they caused medical

groups like the nebraska medical

association applauded the nebraska

supreme court's decision friday

they say it will keep malpractice

insurance costs down for doctors

and that in turn will keep down medical

costs when states enact caps

on damages doctors insurance premiums

typically do not go down

and it's interesting that when these

various limitations

are enacted in various states

there's never a requirement that the

insurance companies pass any savings

along

to the policy holder the insurance

companies are charging still a lot i

think a lot of money to doctors in

nebraska

and they're not having to pay out very

much money in nebraska so what are they

they're making

it's their little pot of gold the

insurance industry

says well don't look at us it's not our

fault that rates are going up it's all

those juries and judges and lawyers and

and victims that are suing us it's all

their fault

those excessive jury awards cost us all

money

and it's part of rye rising why there's

rising costs

uh in the health care health care system

if it was

true that medical malpractice litigation

actually drove up health care costs

then we would expect that since 2003

when basically nobody no patient was

allowed to hold a doctor or hospital

accountable anymore

in texas we would expect that health

care costs health care spending would go

down

well in fact the opposite is true health

care spending has been going up

in texas at a rate higher than the

national average since we

restricted patients rights to access the

courthouse so

the myth just doesn't jive with reality

over these years there's a whole lot of

things that

i want to say about caps and and

to say just how they've affected us

doesn't really

um i don't know it doesn't really hit

the nail on the head so much

i mean they've affected us obviously i

mean we have a we have a

son who will never be able to grow up

and

earn his own living never go off to

college never have his own family

he'll require care for the rest of his

life and so

how does the cap affect you it it it

makes his future

unknown i mean you have this person that

you're

responsible for and that you love that

you don't know if you're gone what's

going to happen to them

i mean if it's your child take your

child

and say you're gone and give them to the

state and let the state do whatever they

want with them and

is that what you want for your child

that's not what i want for my child

especially when your child can't ever

grow up and take care of themselves

they're relying on

people to take care of them so that's

how their cap affects you

i know that no

in many respects these laws violate

state constitutional provisions that

protect people's rights

and in order to protect those new laws

against challenge in the courts the

business community decided that it was

important to them

to stack the deck in their favor

with the supreme courts of various

states they wanted their own set of

judges who would be deciding whether

these

restrictions on people's rights would be

upheld

watch out snake watch out snickers

grisham books some of them anyway

this was written two years ago john uh

decided to write the appeal

he'd talk to me about it because he

wanted me to help him get the get the

details right in the book he likes

the books to be accurate it's about it's

interesting because it's about uh

it sort of tracks what i went through um

it's about a mississippi supreme court

justice running for reelection

and being um attacked by these

out-of-state

big business interest groups that are

coming in trying to defeat the incumbent

supreme court justice

so that they can get their corporate

interests on the um

you know on the court so yeah

as the legislature would try to affect

tort reform

if they did get into law then it came

down to the courts

to decide whether that law was

constitutional and

there started to be decisions around the

country that said that these laws were

not constitutional they went too far

so then the businesses said well we

can't

pass those laws what we can do is to try

and have judges who decide these cases

be really conservative business oriented

judges

karl rove developed this plan and worked

with the chamber of commerce

to influence the outcome of key judicial

races around the country

they put in place a pretty aggressive

campaign ranking which states are most

important for them to be in

and putting tens of millions of dollars

a year into these elections that often

had

tiny amounts of money i started getting

calls from carl

in the middle to late 1980s as he began

his work representing at the beginning

state supreme court candidates in texas

rove was able to put together a

franchise basically

to elect republicans who he was

representing

with a guarantee that they would have

well financed races

and business interests got supreme court

judges who were going to rule

their way on business cases and on tort

cases

by the time you reached the 1990s this

corps of conservative republican

tort minded judges were ruling

overwhelmingly

for some of the largest corporate

interests in texas

it's a model that they used and they

exported to other states

it's a good payoff it's a good payoff

you put money in the judicial race

uh you spend a hundred thousand dollars

to help uh challenge a

judicial candidate it can have literally

a million dollar impact on your company

and it seems that that's happening more

and more throughout the country that

our state supreme courts are reversing

civil juries in this country at an

unprecedented

level after seeing the gifts of millions

of dollars

last week the supreme court reversed a

century of law

that i believe will open the floodgates

for special interests

including foreign corporations to spend

without limit in our elections

if you get five people in our state we

have nine so the majority is five

you get five judges that have that

persuasion

to be always with the doctors or be

always with

corporations you have court reform

and that is more deadly than tort reform

ever thought about being

that's what this karl rove chamber is

about

and they came into these southern states

and mississippi was a good state

to take on because it's a small state

not much money

and the u.s chamber putting candidates

that were friendly towards them and they

were able to elect

all of them except for one and that was

oliver diaz's

election the appeal was a book i

published it's a novel it's completely

fiction

and it's completely true uh it's a story

of the

uh purchasing of a supreme court seat in

mississippi

i felt like i kind of lived through it

with oliver

you know no one because he was my friend

nobody had gone through

i was born and raised in biloxi

mississippi

lived there all of my life and then went

to law school

and after law school came back home and

started practicing law there

and in 1987 i was elected to the

mississippi house of representatives

and and started a career in politics at

that point i was his campaign manager

he had these interest groups that were

interested in electing judges that they

deemed to be pro-business i was not

deemed to be pro-business and the u.s

chamber

mounted a very very large and expensive

campaign against

me in two thousand diaz even voted to

overturn a cocaine conviction because

evidence of a prior cocaine sale was

allowed

oliver diaz very bad judgment

the negative ads are still running and

that that part has not

changed the the ads are still on the

television it's it's a terrible

situation

it is demeaning to the office it is

improper that should not have happened

i've told judge

diaz that i've done all i can do to get

those stopped

i don't like it my opponent who was

supported by the u.s chamber of commerce

he had probably a million dollars spent

on his behalf which was not even

it was more than a million dollars spent

on his behalf but it wasn't in his name

and he didn't report that on his

campaign finance reports you know people

think oh the u.s

chamber of commerce they think of it

representing

small chambers on a national scale that

really isn't what the u.s chamber of

the us chamber commerce is um i'm not

really sure

so i'm dealing with the government it

was

my understanding that it was a

government agency but i'm not sure of

that

probably they are getting engaged in

managing uh something

trade do they engage in managing trade

throughout the united states

i'd go with that

the u.s chamber of commerce became a

very very

important player in the tour reform

movement and they have now

been shown to be funneling money into

judicial campaigns

here's here's the way the campaigns

happen okay you have

your doctors hospitals manufacturers

insurance companies you got all those

folks kind of quarterbacked by the

chamber of commerce that's where the

money is

there's nobody on the other side except

for trial lawyers

because the trial lawyers know the law

and they know what's going to happen

if these judges are elected we were

playing by a certain set of rules there

were campaign finance

laws that you had to know where the

money was coming from

and there were limits on some of the

amounts of money baifu gave it

the trial lawyers are limited as to how

much money they can put in

if you give more than five thousand

dollars a judge can't sit on your case

whereas if the money comes from the

chamber all that money was packaged into

a large group

and there's no way that you can see who

were the contributors

the chamber puts in millions of dollars

into state races through some kind of a

front group

you know citizens for strong ohio or

partnership for

ohio groups that sound like they're

citizens groups

but in fact are really business groups

hiding behind a false veneer

we're doing much much better in the

courts and in the election of judges to

the state

supreme courts we're in those races

we'll spend 19 million dollars

in the election of those judges and

state attorneys general in this next

election

they spent so much money against us they

would run almost every 15 to 20 minutes

on tv on our local station so we got to

where we just didn't have the tvs on and

all of a sudden one morning

we didn't want the kids to see these

horrible ads some of the ads actually

had big money bags being thrown up on a

bench that he was bought and paid for

his generous friends diaz's campaign

took over one hundred thousand dollars

from personal injury lawyers

and so one morning we hear you know just

woohoo and

our daughter is just like cheering

downstairs when we come down and

um she's like we're rich or rich and

she'd seen the ad with the big bags of

money you know on the bench and

her daddy's name the game plan was to

pick out a justice try to make that

justice look soft on crime

take snippets from decisions that the

justice had made

manipulate those decisions to make them

seem absolutely outrageous and

ridiculous

and spend a lot of money to get that

message out to the voters

the amount of money that's spent on

television in a

political campaign has an enormous

effect on the outcome and in fact in

2000 the statistics showed that the

side that spent the most money won about

90 percent of the time

we had two weeks until um we had to run

again for a runoff

and we find out that the us chamber

had literally almost purchased all of

the available

air time that there was available from

jackson to biloxi mississippi

what we had to do at the time was

actually take out loans to finance the

campaign

and if you're familiar with banking at

all

they generally don't like to loan money

to

folks who may lose an election so you

have to have somebody

with money that co-signs on your behalf

and

my very good friend paul miner was

willing to step up

and sign a loan at the bank to allow

us to compete with the u.s chambers ads

that we're running at the time

keith starrett's special interest group

from washington d.c recently started

attacking me and distorting my record

i refuse to be negative but i must

defend my record

i still don't know how we did it to this

very day but we actually won that

election

i really honestly thought when we won

and celebrated that election

we had thought that was a good day and

it turned out to be probably

one of the worst days of our life the

election was

federal prosecutors decided to

investigate

me and used uh the loans that paul minor

had co-signed at the bank

and called that a bribe and and said

that he bribed me as a judge

but what's really interesting about that

is

i never voted for a single case

in which paul minor or his law firm or

anybody he was

associated with had brought before the

supreme court because of our friendship

and then that summer oliver was indicted

and it just kind of started spiraling

downhill from there

um i almost kind of didn't believe

oliver

i said there has to be something here

you're not telling me the truth

they wouldn't bring these charges

against us and do this

all of these counts are facing a hundred

and some years in

the federal penitentiary we have

millions of dollars millions of dollars

in fines we have two small children

oliver diaz says the charges against him

are groundless because he withdrew from

all cases

involving paul minor diaz is on leave

from the supreme court

until the case is resolved the decision

to prosecute justice diaz

may have been motivated by tort reform

politics

it may have been motivated by an effort

to

remove justice diaz from the supreme

court where he

often voted for ordinary citizens and

against corporations

but it certainly was not a prosecution

that was based on the evidence because

the evidence did not support it

do you think that oliver was prosecuted

for political reasons

sure i don't think there's any doubt

about that

we thought we were just targeted and

this was just us and this political

prosecution was just

us we have later found out that this

happened all over the country

and those other judges were that won or

were successful

were also targeted

after a three-month trial i was

completely acquitted

of all charges a jury returned not

guilty verdicts on everything

but three days after my trial

i was reindicted on tax evasion charges

so i had to go through another federal

trial after that first three-month trial

and had a week-long trial this time on

tax charges

and after a 15-minute deliberation time

by the jury i was fully acquitted a

second time

and i was finally cleared to return to

the bench but not after

i had been removed from the bench for

almost three years

so what they weren't able to do through

an election

they were able to do with a federal

prosecution federal investigation

to keep me off the bench to ruin my

reputation to make it

that i probably wouldn't be able to

be elected again to the mississippi

supreme court

some other people were elected who were

considered to be much more business

friendly

justices than had served on the court in

the years past and it really really did

alter things in mississippi after the

court swung

he went like two years without upholding

a plaintiff verdict

you know you might be able to win with

the jury but you have no hope of

having that that verdict sustained by

the courts

i think sort of the taint of these

charges

and sort of the residue of all of that

and the fact that some people in the

public simply assumed he was guilty

because he was charged of it

causing him to be defeated for

reelection also

i was not able to to raise the funds to

compete

i raised about a quarter of the amount

that i'd raised in my first election

if two or three million dollars is being

spent or 10 million dollars is being

spent

this way it's going now in 10 years from

now they'll be spending 100 million

dollars on judicial elections and

it's not really a good way to have

the system work and there's many people

in the business community who don't

agree with me on that

can you tell us why you're here today at

this reform summit we're here to receive

the leadership achievement award oh for

what

we're passing a 208-page civil justice

reform law in oklahoma

that is going to take the bullseye off

the back of business in our state

what does that mean exactly it means

that we're protecting our businesses

from frivolous lawsuits

and do you think there are a lot of

frivolous lawsuits there are and we

think that there's a

definite cost to the medical profession

and the cost of doing business

where we have to protect that companies

that are now doing business in our

country from

that kind of invasiveness and so who

brings these frivolous lawsuits all

kinds of people people that are jackpot

justice oriented

do you think tort reform is a good thing

for the american public without a doubt

why

why is that there's an incredible amount

of

frivolous lawsuits it directly impacts

everything from healthcare to

you know prices in stores to

small businesses it's extremely

important and where do you work or what

do you do

i am uh i'm a lawyer okay and with a law

firm or

in-house counseling for what kind of

company or advisor

i think we've just gone to for her we

have too much limitation

and so who who benefits from having less

litigation

everybody except except the trial

lawyers and

how do you do you want to like eliminate

people's rights to go to the court

system

i want to give people my own preference

would be to give people rights to sign

contracts

when they buy products and so forth so

the contracts would determine

what rights they had are these things

like the arbitration clauses that are in

contracts like the mandatory arbitration

yeah those are those are useful useful

causes

sometimes um litigation is harmful to

all of us

and they're better means to resolve

disputes than through the courts

you mentioned a few of them already

arbitration is a very good one

and there are lots of others but i hope

you'll excuse me no problem thank you so

much i appreciate it

did she get any on her head yes

that doesn't go on your head baby girl

thank you silly you thirsty

you want drink honey oh yeah

off coke for breakfast

i had never heard of a mandatory

arbitration clause

before i had signed my employment

contract with halliburton

i worked for halliburton in houston and

i wanted to help operation iraqi freedom

my mom was very sick at home so i needed

to help support her

they say it's more likely that you get

in a car wreck than something happening

to you in iraq

so as a 19 year old girl you believe

your

elders and you think that that's

probably true

so four years ago at the age of 19

ms jamie lee jones signed a contract to

become

an employee of kbr then a halliburton

subsidiary

that contract contained a clause which

required her to arbitrate any future

dispute against her employer

this means it forced her to give up her

right to seek redress

in court if she was wronged mandatory

arbitration is uh somebody has to be

involved

in the case isn't it or something

because arbitration is

how the case is now it has something to

do with case files

have you heard no i've heard the two

words used separately

that's right businesses use a number of

devices to keep the public out of the

courts

but one of the devices they've used is

they've written clauses into contracts

that say that you cannot go to court you

can only go to arbitration

what we started to see was again and

again

our clients had been forced to sign

in fine print of contracts these

mandatory arbitration or forced

arbitration clauses

and none of our clients knew that those

provisions were there and then it was

only after we got hold of their

documents

that we would say to them hey did you

know you supposedly

agreed that you are not allowed to sue

the company

do you know that you agreed that instead

of going to a jury that you have to go

to

a private arbitrator who's with the

company that's picked

by the company who cheated you and when

you ask people

about binding arbitration and would you

knowingly sign away

your rights they say well of course not

and then you ask them well do you have a

cell phone

do you have a gem membership do you did

you know do you have a credit card do

you know whether you've ever

agreed to mandatory arbitration in any

of your contracts

um i don't believe i ever have no do you

own a credit could you have a credit

card well maybe i have

when you first sign a contract with a

cell phone company or a credit card

company or whatnot

there won't be any reference or any

mention of the arbitration clause

but then at some point the company

decides to add it so what they do is

they send out

an incredibly tiny print a little

booklet that they stick in with the bill

and what almost everybody does is you

look at the bill

and you throw everything else away but

that's where they send in

the arbitration clause and then what

they say is if you ever use your phone

again

or you ever use your credit card again

that you've supposedly agreed

to mandatory arbitration what's happened

in america

is that entire industries have all

adopted mandatory arbitration clauses

you'll see them in credit card

agreements checking account agreements

lending agreements cell phone contracts

virtually anything that's bought over

the internet

computers books records virtually all

nursing homes nearly every contract to

buy a new car

health clubs tanning salons i have a

friend who took

her cat in to be boarded while she went

on vacation

and the kennel made her sign a mandatory

arbitration clause that they killed her

cat or did something horrible to it that

she couldn't go to court

you have no bargaining power you as a

consumer or a worker are forced

into these things and you really never

had a choice in the matter

mandatory arbitration is fast becoming

the rule rather than the exception

the practice of forcing employees to use

arbitration

has been on the rise there are several

surveys that show that more than a third

of the working people in america

are bound to forced arbitration clauses

in fact far more american workers are

governed by

mandatory forced arbitration clauses

than are members of unions

in in modern america today

i worked for halliburton in houston for

a little bit over

a year before i decided to go to iraq

when i was in iraq halliburton and kbr

were the same

company those that go over to iraq

get promoted when they come home also i

mean my goal is to just work

there forever i was content there until

everything happened i was told that i

would be housed

in a little trailer house with one

female

on one side another on one side and then

a bathroom shared in the middle

and when i got there i was perplexed

because i was put in a predominantly

all-male barrack

i didn't see any females there i emailed

some of the

managers that i knew from houston and i

told them i was concerned

that i wanted you know to be moved into

the living quarters that i was promised

and one guy emailed me back and just

said oh you'll get over it men had their

doors open

and some were in boxers and their cat

calling

when i woke up i was severely beaten

my chest was disfigured i was bleeding

between my legs i was naked

i washed my hands and then i saw the

bruises on my wrist and i'm starting to

put together

that something major happened to my body

and then i go back up the stairs down

the hall

and i looked in my room and there was a

man in the bottom bunk

and i don't remember if he was clothed

or anything

i was so like shocked that part bits and

pieces of it are

gone from me it was just

it was the worst moment in my entire

life to actually

see a man brazen enough to still be

there in the room after

raping me and it was really

hard and i know now that the reason why

he was still in the room

was because he would be able to get away

with it

i want to seek medical help and

at the army doctor she said that i had

been

um penetrated both vaginally and

anally and that the

tears down there were significant

you've heard a lot about halliburton

lately criticism

is okay we can take it criticism is

not failure our employees are doing a

great job

we're feeding the soldiers we're

rebuilding iraq

will things go wrong sure they will it's

a war zone

but when they do we'll fix it we always

have

so then two kpr security officers took

me to

a it's been called a lot of things

shipping container

trailer essentially i was in prison

there was two

armed guards outside of my door i

was begging and pleading through the

door to you know let me get out of there

and finally one of the

guards out of sympathy let me use this

phone i called my father who contacted

congressman ted poe

well it was almost unbelievable here she

is a young

19 year old female

and according to her dad she had

she was locked up in one of these

shipping crates so

the first thing that i thought should

happen is get her out of that situation

you know send the troops over to rescue

her so to speak and

the state department i thought did a

pretty good job after i was rescued

by federal agents they formed a meeting

with

kbr management and management told me

that i had two options one i could

continue working there

or two i could go home and be terminated

i tried to pursue my criminal case and

it didn't work

and then i tried to file a civil suit

and that didn't work out because of the

arbitration clause of my

employment contract

no one would conceive that this would

happen to them first of all

and secondly no one would conceive that

this would be oh well then

the company that sent you over there and

put you in this position

where you were raped is also you're just

going to have to arbitrate with us

secretly

i mean i don't think anyone could

possibly conceive that that would happen

whenever you take a case out of the

court system you're immediately put into

a biased

type of forum arbitration happens to be

extremely biased

most arbitrations take place in secret

if you have a private

judge so if you have a credit card

agreement the credit card company

picks who the arbitration company is

going to be and then the arbitration

company

picks an individual arbitrator to hear

your case the arbitrator

wants repeat business and they only deal

with you once

but they deal with the bank of america

or general motors or whoever it is the

businesses

they deal with them day in and day out

and so they're going to tilt their

decisions

toward the businesses there have been a

bunch of examples

where if the arbitrator ruled in favor

of a consumer

or ruled in favor of somebody who was an

employee

that they were blackballed and they

never got to work again

as an arbitrator so they set up systems

that are essentially

rigged against the consumers many

studies show that consumers come out

winning these cases maybe less than 10

of the time

they're almost always won by the bank or

the credit card company

it's impossible to find out what the

reason is for an arbitrator

ruling for one side or another they just

say this side wins

this side loses and that's it and

there's no right to appeal

so i have to take the final judgment of

one guy who's been picked by my credit

card company

to tell me that i'm gonna end up having

to pay

i'm not okay with that yeah i'm not okay

with that no huh that's

actually upsetting transparency is a

must in the judicial process so

if there's no oversight in that regard

i'd be pretty i'd be pretty worried

attilan unless congress takes action

with regard to

restricting the use of these binding

arbitration clauses we're all going to

be stuck

with these clauses senator al franken

proposing the pentagon

shouldn't hire contractors that make

their employees agree in advance

not to sue if they're raped by coworkers

i just started the jamie lee foundation

and i've been trying to

bring awareness to the situation to help

others through my foundation so behind

the scenes up to this point you've been

trying to pursue

every legal avenue oh yeah

i went public because i wanted to bring

awareness to situations that there was a

loophole in our justice system

that needed to be fixed very quickly

if i could just you know get this out

there what happened to me

that maybe you know people would change

the law

somehow the laws would change

all right i think he's oh

thanks thank you for your courage that's

just amazing

very nice to meet you nice to meet you

you have an incredibly

courageous daughter and also with a

tremendous amount of persistence

yeah so way to go thank you

and you're testifying tomorrow yes sir

uh-huh

carl i've specified in front of congress

a few times

is it judiciary committee tomorrow uh

judiciary

yeah that's me it's you

i turned to the civil court system for

justice when the criminal justice

system was slow to respond when my

lawyers filed the suit

they were met with halliburton's

response that all of my claims

were to be decided in arbitration

because i had signed away

my right to a trial by jury at such an

early age

i had no choice to sign this contract

because i needed this job

i had no idea that the clause was part

of the contract what the cause actually

meant or that i'd eventually end up in

this horrible situation

the problem of forcing claims like mine

into secret system a binding arbitration

goes well beyond me

even when victims pursue their claims in

arbitration the information is sealed

and kept confidential

the system of arbitration keeps this

evidence from ever coming to public

light

and allows companies like halliburton to

continue to allow the abuse

of their employees without repercussion

or public scrutiny seminal question is

should employers and employees be able

to engage in mediation

and mandatory binding arbitration of

employment disputes as alternatives to

litigation

the seminal answer is absolutely

adr and employment programs are

flourishing when implemented

appropriately they're decisively an

employee's best interest

it is a popular concept for those

employers who've adopted and adopted it

appropriately

it provides for more effective

communication in your comments

sure do you also tell how arbitration

would be helpful to somebody like miss

jones when the

when they uh her employer halliburton

been affected the

rape and sexual assault has just been

considered part of the job

what we have in this situation i'm not

here representing

anyone involved in that case i'm not

involved in that case

you know miss jones has had her day in

court and maybe more than she'd want

it goes on and on and on and i

understand that what we're talking about

is the concept

of adr and dispute resolution programs

overall

senator franken thank you mr chairman

and thank you for calling

uh this hearing uh mr dibernardo

you said that the net result of the use

of arbit

of arbitration is a better workplaces

correct better workplaces

correct she was housed with 400 men

she told kbr

twice that she was being sexually

harassed

she was drugged by men

that the kbr employment people knew did

this kind of thing

she was raped gang raped she had to have

reconstructive surgery sir

they had this this arbitration

now if that created a better workplace

and then she was locked in a shipping

container

with an armed guard now my question to

you is

if that's a better workplace

what was the workplace like before

that's a rhetorical question i'm not

really asking that question

they had binding arbitration at kbr

and because of that and they asserted it

on cases like this and ms jones

in your foundation you've heard from

other women

who are raped is that not true yes sir i

have and

uh and women who under arbitration

yes sir we're told to keep silent is

that right

exactly and because of that silence

you didn't know about anything like this

did you exactly i didn't know

it was not public knowledge

and when mr dubinario said that you had

your day in court

what was your reaction i was livid

sir

four years to fight to get in court is

not a day in court

um i was livid too

this is a result of your binding

mandatory arbitration

mr dibernardo

thank you mr chairman

as i talk to people who have been harmed

look most of them are not interested

in a big payday most of these people are

interested in accountability

and the and the way our system is

structured the only way we have some

holds

we have to hold somebody accountable is

through the courthouse

i can't tell you why people support tort

reform i can tell you that if they have

supported tort reform

and that they subsequently get hurt

they're really sorry that they did

there's a story of a gentleman in waco

he was harmed

and he sought to hold the doctor who

harmed him accountable

and he came to find out that he couldn't

do that and

he had voted for the state

constitutional amendment that allowed

the legislature to limit the rights of

patients and when

he was told well you know proposition 12

is what made this happen made it so that

you couldn't access the courthouse

he said well i voted for that and they

said well you know a lot of people did

and that's why it's the law of the land

now he said but that doesn't

that that's not my case that's those

people who file frivolous lawsuits

those are those people who are trying to

take advantage of the system that's

those people who are

trying to cash in on some lawsuit

lottery that's not what i'm trying to do

i was harmed and all i'm trying to do is

hold the person who harmed me

accountable

and he realized at that moment

what i've been told all of these years

they think that's me we don't need tort

reform

uh we need to taught respect where the

the tort law is what makes this country

strong it is

tort law and the bringing of tort

lawsuits

and the rendering of civil damages

that's what keeps our toys safe

it's what keeps our cars from horribly

injuring people

it's what keeps people from lying

cheating and stealing

if we can't hold perpetrators of

wrongdoing accountable

none of us are safe from their actions

that's the role that the civil justice

system plays

the one entity that can hold businesses

bad doctors

accountable as the civil jury and that's

what they're most afraid of

why is it that you support an effort to

limit the ability of

juries to make a decision when you're

suing businesses

but you support the idea that juries

should be allowed to decide in death

penalty cases

where the issue is whether or not some

person should die

ultimately it comes down to whether you

trust jurors certainly it's the best

system anybody's come up

with in the history of the world to

resolve disputes

involving ordinary people then the

question becomes what's the alternative

so should we let the businesses decide

should we let arbitrators decide

if we give up the civil jury as a tool

for holding

wrongdoers and the business community

accountable

what's the alternative who's going to

police them and the answer is no one

they're going to police themselves and

that's exactly what they want

it really opened my eyes to

how the system works and

the things that i thought were in place

to protect you

have been have been taken away and i

didn't realize

there were caps here and i didn't

realize that

the doctor wouldn't have to pay for this

that the taxpayers were going to pay

for collins damages

this is a campaign that's occurring all

across the united states it's not only

in mississippi

they don't want a level playing field

and they'll

spend millions of dollars to get these

people in place

to be sure that the judges will rule the

way that they want them to

i still have flashbacks i still get

jumpy if someone comes up behind me

have nightmares i wish

that i could confront the men that did

this to my body

i think that it would be instrumental to

my healing

the only way i could do that is if i'm

able to face them

in a court of law and

i hope to do that one day

i mean i've heard so many ridiculous

stories about she was asking for 30

million dollars or

you know something equally ridiculous

basically stella told them

i want you to cover what medicare

doesn't cover and i want you to get a

better lid on that coffee because i

don't want this to happen to another

person

and that was basically what she was

asking for

when somebody goes to court they're

doing something extraordinary that is

hidden

to go to court and to sue is not a

simple procedure

you have to go through a lot of trouble

to do it it affects your life

you're going to be attacked in all kinds

of ways going to court

to gain justice is heroic

that idea has to be out there

that is when you quote win a case

you win it for other people as well as

gaining justice for yourself

so

you