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Tort Reform Advocate Judge Bork Settles Slip and Fall Lawsuit with Yale Club
May 14, 2008

There's nothing like a little sample of what you've spent your entire life being cold heartedly cynical about to give you a clearer view of things. One wishes though that Judge Robert H. Bork had chosen a slightly less humiliating accident case to make his dramatic turnaround.

The 80-year-old judge, a one time Supreme Court nominee and ardent tort reform advocate, has settled a $1 million lawsuit with the Yale Club as a result of a slip and fall injury in 2006. At that event sponsored by a magazine, Bork fell while trying to climb up to the dais to make his address. The injuries sustained in the incident, he claimed, were so severe that he needed surgery, which left him with a limp.

There would be nothing about this case to differentiate from other personal injury cases. What has made the conservative tort reform advocate red-faced and liberals turning cartwheels in delight is the level of hypocrisy shown by the judge. Consider this. One of the most illuminating moments of his public career came when he wrote a letter to Newt Gingrich in the nineties, alleging that "excessive damage awards" and "frivolous lawsuits" were having a detrimental effect on interstate commerce. More recently, in a 2002 article published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Judge Bork argued that the "present tort system poses dangers to interstate commerce." He concluded, "placing limits or caps on punitive damages, or eliminating joint or strict liability" while once thought to be beyond lawmakers' power "may now be constitutionally appropriate." And what does Judge Bork do in his lawsuit? He asks for punitive damages. Apparently, he has now decided to make it known that the rest of us should do as he says, not as he does.

All it took for him to see the light was to slip and fall and break his hip. Strange how a fractured hip can suddenly give you clarity.

Even more surprising than the about face, was the lawsuit itself. It claimed damages in excess of $1 million for a fractured hip, and punitive damages as well. No one is trying to take the good judge's suffering away from him, but the fact is that an 80-year-old man perhaps shouldn't be trying to climb lecterns that have no steps. With his distinguished career behind him, you would think the learned judge would be aware of the physical dangers of climbing a stairless dais that had no handrail.

What would Judge Bork himself have done if a case like this had come before him, we wonder? Throw it out with his usual diatribe against frivolous lawsuits? We're inclined to think so.

It's funny how things don't seem so frivolous when you're the one who has been injured in an accident on somebody else's premises. You could argue that Judge Bork's position on tort reform should not come in the way of a settlement, now that he himself has been the victim of a slip and fall accident. This is precisely where the hypocrisy comes in. For you to publish articles on tort reform, and then, when a slip and fall pushes you into the uncomfortable plaintiff's position that you've so condescendingly sneered at all these years, and for you to then grab the nearest accident lawyer and scream personal injury, is a bit much. We expect hypocrisy from the man on the street, not a public servant who has always behaved as if personal injury lawsuits and damages will one day lead to the demise of the human race.

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