David:
As you seem interested in this issue, here's a reply I got to my
vaccine question from my knowledgeable friend, Ron, who is not on this
network.
Your,
Asa
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The proposal, as I understand it, is not to cap liability for actual
damages, that is medical bills, lost future earning cased by death of a
working person, burial costs, child care and similar real damages. Real
damages are affordable and can be insured against. Rather, the proposal
would protect drug companies from punitive damages, which make up most
of the awards in
recent absurd tort cases and settlements to avert punitive damages, and
vicarious liability, the convoluted search for deep pockets seen in many
of these abusive tort awards. Vicarious liability generally involves
some obscure claim for agency of the party with deep pockets. Since in
the case of vaccines, the only deep pocket would be the drug company
producing them, no reasonable Board of Directors would allow a major
drug company to produce the vaccines without tort protection. There
have been several occasions recently when vaccines were needed by the
Armed Forces and the natural producers not being able to obtain tort
relief by statute and not
being able to insure the risk, essentially put the product in the public
domain and the DOD funded a "no pocket" production corporation to make
it. The tort situation for corporations is so bad that most Boards
would not do this again because of the potential for vicarious liability
for the intellectual property or the bugs or the proto-vaccine.
The enormous contributions of the Plaintiffs lawyers to the Democratic
Party and to four of five key Republican Senators, McCain and Jeffords,
before he switched parties, particularly, are intended to prevent tort
limits, like those proposed for vaccines. Absent a ban on punitive
damages and vicarious liability, big tort awards are a sure thing with
any vaccine. And not just from the actual medical problems that are
sure to arise. Count on a vaccine syndrome and a jury somewhere in the
Mississippi Delta -- LA, MISS or ARK.
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--
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles.
-- Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
