Saturday, August 13, 2011

Do you think we should reform the tort system this way?

What I REALLY don't like about our current tort system is that it's based on finger-pointing rather than problem-solving. Remember when we were children and our parents used to teach us, "It doesn't matter who started the problem. All that matters is actually solving it."? Why isn't that principle applied to our courts? To punish someone by making them pay a million dollars for something they probably didn't even intend to do is NEVER productive because it doesn't actually solve the problem and it doesn't undo what's already been done. It's nothing more than childish finger pointing. So, I think we should reform the tort system so that the person who's been harmed only gets as much money as is required to correct the harm and NOTHING MORE than that! For example, if someone gets in a car accident, the at-fault driver should only pay the victim driver as much money as is necessary to fix the person's car. The jury should NOT be focusing on how to punish the person who started the car accident because all that matters is that the car actually gets fixed. In other words, there should be no concept of punitive damages in our courts. First of all, the concept of punitive damages is flawed because it umes that the person who was sued had bad intentions, committed the offense on purpose, and wants to do it again. But, most of the time, people are sued for things they DIDN'T mean to do and if they didn't MEAN to do it, then there's no guarantee that punitive damages are going to deter them from doing it again. Therefore, the court should ume that the person who was sued had good intentions, let them learn from their mistakes on their own, and instead focus on conflict resolution. So, I think our damages in civil court should be renamed Conflict Resolution Damages. What do you think of this proposal?

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