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August 03, 2005

Trial lawyers lose a fight; everyone else wins

When I hired a car to go to Providence last month, obtaining the car proved a challenge. I rode two trains, boarded a bus, and took another train before I arrived at Hertz in Newark, New Jersey. Why? Because a Volvo in New Jersey cost $69/day, vs $129/day in New York. Why the difference? Because back in the horse-and-buggy days, unscrupulous carriage operators leased their carriages to operators who drove uninsured. Hence New York's "vicarious liability" law, which held car hire agencies responsible for the acts of people who hired the car. The cost incurred because of the bad drivers gets bourne by everyone who hires a car in New York.

Once laws get made, it's hard to un-make them, even if they double the cost of something like car hire. The law remained on the books until the passage of the pork-laden highway bill last week. Trial lawyers here screamed that the law "puts corporate profits over the people's well being." That sort of populism is usually a canard, especially when the benefit to "people's well-being" means having to leave the state to rent a car or paying twice what one should. If trial lawyers support a law, it's probably best for the rest of us to oppose it, unless we like going to Jersey.

Posted by adrianjo at August 3, 2005 04:29 PM

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