Thus sayeth conservative legal guru, and failed Reagan Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork, who has railed against excessive damages awards for tort claimants for years — until his own slip and fall case, that is:
Judge Robert Bork, one of the fathers of the modern judicial conservative movement whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate, is seeking $1,000,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages, after he slipped and fell at the Yale Club of New York City. Judge Bork was scheduled to give a speech at the club, but he fell when mounting the dais, and injured his head and left leg. He alleges that the Yale Club is liable for the $1m plus punitive damages because they “wantonly, willfully, and recklessly” failed to provide staging which he could climb safely.
Judge Bork has been a leading advocate of restricting plaintiffs’ ability to recover through tort law. In a 2002 article published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy–the official journal of the Federalist Society–Bork argued that frivolous claims and excessive punitive damage awards have caused the Constitution to evolve into a document which would allow Congress to enact tort reforms that would have been unconstitutional at the framing ….
Well, there’s excessive and there’s excessive, I suppose, and I’m sure Judge Bork is well within his rights to demand ONE MILLION DOLLARS + PUNITIVE DAMAGES from the Yale Club for his own clumsiness and recklessness in attempting to climb aboard a dais that he himself claims in his lawsuit was recognizably unsafe. But it does seem like he’s conspiring to out-Onion The Onion, does it not? Oh well, as they say (they being Republicans) IOKIYAR!**
PS. Here’s Bork’s complaint (caution: pdf file) against The Yale Club of New York if you would like a chuckle or three.
PPS. Here’s Bork in his own words on the evils of large tort damages awards to our nation (from his own 2002 article in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy):
The present tort system poses dangers to interstate commerce not unlike those faced under the Articles of Confederation. Even if Congress would not, in 1789, have had the power to displace state tort law, the nature of the problem has changed so dramatically as to bring the problem within the scope of the power granted to Congress. Accordingly, proposals, such as placing limits or caps on punitive damages, or eliminating joint or strict liability, which may once have been clearly understood as beyond Congress’s power, may now be constitutionally appropriate.
Oh, what a lucky man he was (and is) that Congress, when it was controlled by Republicans from 2002-2006, didn’t take him up on his suggestion.
** IOKIYAR = “It’s OK if you’re a Republican”
