E2 tragedy challenges calls for tort reform

February 19, 2003|By David Greising.

Eazay Rogers had a life ahead of her. Three lives, actually.

There was her life and the lives of her two young children

She had a 3-year-old girl and another just 2 weeks old. She was studying to become a nurse so she could make her girls' lives better.

The girls will have to carry on without their mother now. Rogers went for a night out Saturday at the E2 nightclub. She never came back.

She died, along with 20 others, in a crushing stampede down a narrow stairwell. The E2 patrons fled toward fresh air after security guards filled the hip-hop hangout with pepper spray while breaking up a fight.

Witnesses say security guards locked exit doors. That fueled the frenzy and trapped the crowd. The city, in a criminal complaint Tuesday, said E2's owners violated a court order not to operate the club on the second floor of the building at 2437 S. Michigan Ave.

Now the search for justice starts.

There is no way to compensate for the loss of Rogers' life. But fortunately, the laws in this country still allow victims of negligent or worse conduct to get justice in the face of grave loss.

That's right. This country "still" allows fair recovery for loss.

But that could change if advocates of tort reform get their way.

Tort reform often sounds good when politicians pound away at it. It's easy to demonize "contingency-fee trial lawyers" and "runaway juries." And it's simple to make targets out of obese plaintiffs who sue McDonald's alleging the french fries make people fat.

From there, it's a short hop to the particulars: A cap of $250,000 on non-economic damages. Bans on punitive damages. Caps on contingency-fee payments.

The wish list started out on the Business Round Table's agenda. It's now before Congress as a medical tort-reform bill. Expect proposals to grow from there.

"Tort reform" is actually a marketing slogan. For the hard-liners, "tort eradication" would be closer to the truth.

A case like the E2 disaster shows why a wholesale rewriting of the nation's tort laws would be an injustice.

The victims of the E2 disaster aren't easily demonized.

They were mostly working-class people out for a night on the town. A UPS driver. An auto pound worker. A hairdresser. A hospital security guard.

Out for the night on a holiday weekend, they put their lives in the hands of entrepreneurs and promoters at a club that the courts had declared unsafe.

Turns out the E2 was a death trap, and the victims got caught. "It was like the Titanic in a nightclub," one survivor recalled.

No recovery, no matter how large, will bring back the young people who died early Monday. But justice demands that those responsible should have to pay for any negligence that caused this calamity--and pay in full.

What would have been the value of Eazay Rogers' life? She wanted to be a nurse, but she wasn't one yet. Lawyers can calculate her expected career earnings, then arrive at a present-day value of that total.

With tort reform, her family could recover up to $250,000 more for "social loss." But that would be the end of it.

In today's court system, however, that wouldn't be the end of it. The law allows for punitive damages.

And that, more than anything, is what tort reform advocates don't like. They say punitive damages create excesses. "It's a subjective figure that's heavily influenced by the emotion of the case and the ability of the lawyers," says Edward Murnane, president of the Illinois Civil Justice League.

The argument just doesn't hold up. True, jury awards can be subjective. But at least they allow for judgment, first by the juries, then by the court, then by appeals--all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.

It would be far more arbitrary to deny juries the chance to assess the outrage of calamities such as E2. To hear testimony and witnesses, and then apply whatever outrage and punishment that justice demands.

From President Bush on down, powerful voices are calling for tort reform.

Many other voices say justice is best served by our present system. Because of the E2 disaster, 21 of those voices can't call out any more.


Contact: dgreising@tribune.com