Defeat of No-Fault Car Insurance

It was with a mixture of amusement and frustration that I read your editorial (“Fatal Crash for Auto Insurance?” May 30) regarding the vote on no-fault auto insurance in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

It’s easy to point to a scapegoat--the trial lawyers--as the sole reason SB 941 failed passage in committee, while ignoring its opponents such as Ralph Nader, Voter Revolt, Congress of California Seniors, Public Citizen and more than 30 other groups and organizations. Unfortunately, you also do your readers a great disservice by neglecting to acknowledge the many policy arguments that were discussed at great length during the four-hour discussion on auto insurance, and which ultimately led to SB 941’s failure.

Your position this year on no-fault has been unequivocal and we would not assume it can be changed now.

However, I hope that you will consider the following before you summarily dismiss the tort system again. Our civil justice system is the great equalizer of society, the one place in which the poor and powerless may take the rich and powerful to task for misdeeds. What if I, as a no-fault policyholder, escape unhurt from an accident caused by another person, but my child is beheaded before me? Under no-fault, the loss of my child’s life would not be considered “serious or permanent injury” to me, and I would be entitled to nothing for the greatest of all non-economic injuries--simply because I could not afford complete coverage.

Asking the poor to give up their civil rights in exchange for a low-cost policy is obscene. It is not out of the realm of possibilities to provide for both, and that may ultimately be a system in which everyone--insurers, trial lawyers, health care providers and others--has to sacrifice. The only sacrificial lamb under no-fault is the low-income consumer.

The public would be better served if we coupled lower rates with fraud prosecution and strict regulation of the insurance industry before we asked our citizenry to hand over critical civil rights. I continue to be surprised that The Times would endorse such a Faustian bargain.

IAN HERZOG, President

California Trial Lawyers Assn.

Sacramento