When Dr Paul Hogan got a court award a couple of weeks ago of $2.9 million for being belted over the hand with a strap, the cry went up that Australia was going the way of the US.
Well, I was in the US at the time, otherwise I would have hopped on my hobby horse (the madness of juries) last week.
In some ways we are going the way the of the US. Meanwhile, some legislatures in the US have had enough of overblown awards to plaintiffs and are gong the other way.
Since the strapping case, the letters and talk back have been filled with ex-students talking about how beatings made men of them or how corporal punishment leaves psychological scars forever. Of equal import, however, is the question of whether juries should be allowed near the courts of justice.
Te jury had obviously seen too many episodes of LA Law and the The Practise (yes Americans spell it like that). In these programs, over-acting lawyers play it up to juries to give humungous awards to plaintiffs to “”send messages” and to respond to “”emotional” needs and so on, irrespective of the justice of the case or the fall-out for the public who have to pay, usually in the form of higher insurance policies or higher prices.
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