11 Feb 2006 Tide Turning Against Profiteering Trial Lawyers?

The Wall Street Journal says we have reason for a little bit of hope:

It’s amazing what a little courage from the bench can do to clean up the justice system. Now that word is out that most silicosis lawsuits are shams, ever more judges are helping to expose the corruption.The latest is Florida state Judge David Krathen, who in a recent hearing rebuked plaintiffs lawyers for inventing silicosis suits, and declared “mind-boggling” the effect that phony suits were having on the “economic well-being of this country.” He vowed to ride herd on the claims in his court, separating the good cases from the fake.

This isn’t the way trial lawyers are used to being treated, and credit for this tougher approach goes in part to Texas federal Judge Janis Graham Jack. Judge Krathen made specific reference to the litigation Judge Jack presided over last year, in which she exposed how lawyers, doctors and X-ray screening companies had “manufactured” some 10,000 bogus silicosis suits “for money.”

Read the rest here.