KINDER'S COMMENTARY: EVEN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH THWARTED BY MONEY-HUNGRY LAWYERS

Do we have a legal system worthy of our aspirations to equal justice under law? The question hangs in the air as we sift through the ruins of this week's news on silicone-gel breast implants. In many areas of the civil law, we have less a system of laws than a gigantic lottery mentality at work, to which honest business people are forced to pay a form of tribute bordering on extortion. Let's take it from a Wall Street Journal editorial entitled "The Law Disfigured":

"This week the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, at the behest of Congress, issued its two-year investigation into the possible link between silicone-gel breast implants and various connective-tissue diseases, such as lupus, cancer and scleroderma. They found none.

"This finding of no systemic risk from silicone breast implants repeats the results of similar investigations performed or published the past decade by the following institutions: the Mayo CLinic, the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, the United Kingdom's Health Special Advisory Group, FDA advisory panels, Harvard, John's Hopkins, the University of Michigan, ... the Danish Cancer Society, ... the European Committee on Medical Devices and on and on. ..."

That is, there was literally never any science to support this multibillion-dollar looting spree by the personal-injury lawyers of the plaintiffs' bar. More, from the Journal: "Beginning in the early 1990s, thousands of plaintiffs claiming disease from implants were swept into the U.S. legal system, recruited by the real beneficiaries of the actions, tort lawyers and their allies. The manufacters of silicone implants ultimately proposed to pay lawyers and litigants some $7 billion to settle claims whose scientific basis is zero. The primary manufacturer, Dow Corning, declared bankruptcy.

"... These false claims -- more appropriate to medieval superstition than to an advanced society -- were abetted by the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, the House of Representatives, such prominent media organizations as NBC News, Ralph Nader's litigation factory and state and federal judges."

Joseph Bast, president of a free-market outfit called The Heartland Institute, explains what is afoot: "Plaintiffs' lawyers emerged as a major threat during the 1980s, thanks to a revolution in the legal interpretation of liability, lenient and corrupt judges, and the decision by state and local governments to contract with private attorneys to represent them in litigation against industries.

"In the not-too-distant past, good judges kept junk science out of the courtroom; explained to jurors their duties ... ; threw out excessive awards and fees; and refused to approve proposals to adjoin cases into sweeping class action suits. Those barriers to abuse have crumbled in many states, with devastating effects."

Certain of my Senate colleagues wonder why I, as a person trained in the law, could fight with the personal-injury lawyers of the trial bar as much as I do. The reason is I spent three years sitting in law school classes in the late 1970s. It was then that I listened as these ridiculous search-for-deep-pocket libaility theories were taught to my classmates and me. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.

This is in part what my lawsuit against Attorney General Jay Nixon is about. I'm in the Court of Appeals in Kansas City on that one, where we have just received Nixon's reply brief to ours, filed last month. Stay tuned.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.