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DEL.ICIO.USWant to upend the legal system? State Bar says the gun bill will do it
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The most important press release of the weekend came from the State Bar of Georgia, which announced that — after a Friday emergency meeting of officers — it would oppose the latest permutation of the guns-in-parking-lots bill.
The Georgia Trial Lawyers Association had jumped in a day earlier, but that group has all sorts of baggage from tort-reform fights and its membership’s tendency to donate to Democratic causes.
The State Bar, by contrast, is old money. Corporate, staid, and, more important, ubiquitous. Wherever there’s a lawyer, there’s the Bar.
The issue is the National Rifle Association’s proposal to end vicarious litigation, a concept whereby the employer is held responsible for the employee’s actions.
The NRA proposed to dump the legal doctrine, which is only a few centuries old and looks years younger, as an enticement to Georgia’s business community. Chamber of commerce types have opposed the effort to give employees the right to keep firearms in cars on the company lot as an infringement of private property rights.
Details are to tucked into H.B. 89.
But the business community says its not impressed. And State Bar president Jay Cook on Saturday put the issue in easy-to-understand, apocalyptic terms:
“Surely our legislators don’t realize the devastating consequences this will have on our justice system and the people of Georgia.
“Vicarious liability is a principal of law that’s been with us for more than a thousand years. Is it wise to wipe out a millennium of legal tradition with three paragraphs in an unrelated bill?
“I hope our representatives will give this matter the careful consideration it deserves.”
As a matter of fact, the Senate Rules Committee is to take up the bill within minutes.
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By Jim J
April 16, 2007 9:46 AM | Link to this
“The Georgia Trial Lawyers Association had jumped in a day earlier, but that group has all sorts of baggage from tort-reform fights and its membership’s tendency to donate to Democratic causes.”
You guys are so biased it’s pathetic. You would never criticize the power utilities or oil companies or fundamentalist groups for having a ‘tendency to donate’ to Republican causes, which they do. If that’s not ‘baggage’ I don’t know what is.
So why implicitly critize different groups for donating to the other side, as is their right to do? Unless of course you’re just Republicans yourselves….
By MrLiberty
April 16, 2007 8:47 PM | Link to this
Do you think that the members of the GA legislature go to work with guns and security? You bet they do. Do you think that they care if you and I as taxpayers have to pay out exhorbitant amounts of money if an employee of thd Capitol goes on a shooting rampage? No. Do you think that they would permit us - as THEIR EMPLOYERS - to ban them from having any security where they work? Of course not.
This is not about the NRA. This is about a legislature that believs it has much to fear from the general riff-raff (that’s you and I) but doesn’t have to care about our safety when we are at work toiling for some company so that a portion of our incomes can be stolen to pay for their salaries (and the freebies they throw around to buy votes with).
Just remember, we are supposed to be in charge, not them. Try and remember that the next time you go and vote. God knows they have all forgotten.