The Liability Crisis

Lester Brickman is a man with a mission: to expose the waste and fraud that permeate the system of tort liability as it has grown over the past forty years in the United States. Brickman is not alone in this crusade. Philip Howard has also noted the powerful resistance that the trial bar has posed to any medical malpractice reform. But Brickman offers a broader critique that extends to all phases of the liability system and the procedural engines that drive it forward. Owing to its breadth and detail, Brickman's crusade strikes fear in the hearts of those who profit from the system. That crusade provokes a genuine sense of unease on the part of many Americans who like to believe that the principles of justice and institutions that administer them both work well in their country, as in many cases they do. Yet the signs of real doctrinal and institutional decay are everywhere, at least to those who care to look and who know where to look. Brickman both cares and knows. More unusually, he is prepared to break polite social conventions to speak out against the dominant social elites that are all too comfortable with the current overheated system of liability.