Viewpoint
The Battalion • Texas A&M University Tuesday • June 12, 1979
Pin the tail
on the donkey
Energy shortages and fuel needs dominate newspaper headlines
today. Notices of rising prices, long lines at gas stations and violence
among fellow drivers bombard Americans daily.
Everyone is running around with a label marked “blame looking
for an ass to pin it on.
Former President Gerald Ford blames the Carter administration s
“inefficient” energy policies. Carter blames Congress and the OPEC
countries and the American people blame the oil companies.
Officials should take the “shoot now, ask questions later” philoso
phy. Development of alternative energy sources has been moving at a
snail’s pace since the first real warning of a crisis in 1973.
There will be no national conservation effort until the people are
convinced the shortage is real. But if neither facts, figures, long lines
nor high prices will convince motorists, what will?
The day that a driver cannot find a gas station with pumps operat
ing. The day that stations stay open on Sunday and are closed the rest
of the week. The day that a Cadillac Seville becomes a high class
chicken coop.
And that will be a day too late. K.L.R.
Candidates should
expect "hard knocks’
By ARNOLD SAWISLAK
United Press International
WASHINGTON — If you listen to John
White or Evan Dobelle, you can hear the
theme of Jimmy Carter’s 1980 reelection
campaign. To wit, the water glass is half
full, not half empty and the president is
pumping like mad.
The chairman of the Democratic Na
tional Committee and the chairman of the
Carter-Mondale campaign committee
have been saying essentially the same
thing in recent weeks:
First, the country has some mean prob
lems the Carter administration has not
been able to solve such as inflation and
energy shortages, but the president isn’t
trying to duck them or look for “quick
fixes” that will make things worse in the
long run.
Second, Carter has already compiled a
remarkable record of accomplishment in
reducing unemployment, reforming the
civil service, cutting the budget deficit
ramrodding the Israeli-Egyptian peace
settlement, getting the long-delayed
Panama Canal treaty and negotiating a lid
on the horror weapons of strategic war.
The president’s men are saying, in ef
fect, they expect the voters to respond
positively to the message that Carter has
turned in a pretty good record in dealing
with some very difficult issues in his first
term.
This is a very high-minded approach to
the usually low down business of seeking
elective office in this country. If this re
mains the thrust of the Carter campaign,
we should not be suprised — we should be
amazed.
After the 1978 congressional and state
elections, there was much talk among the
political professionals about the high per
centage of successs enjoyed by “negative”
campaigns. That is jargon for campaigns in
which winners spent most of their time
knocking their opponents.
It is as true in politics as in war that
those who plan such ventures most often
try to pattern the next campaign on the
last successful one. It therefore is an
odds-on bet that there is going to be a lot
of negative campaigning in 1980.
The incumbent usually is at a disadvan
tage in such a situation. In this world of
imperfect solutions to intractable prob
lems, the incumbent often is kept so busy
defending his record that he can’t seize the
initiative to brag about it.
(Lyndon Johnson was able to beat the
game in 1964. Since he had only a short
time in office, the GOP didn’t have much
to blame him for. At the same time,
Johnson managed to pitch the campaign
on the purely speculative question of what
Barry Goldwater might do if he was
elected. Richard Nixon, although he did
have a record in office to defend, managed
the same turnabout feat in 1972 against
George McGovern.)
In any case, it will be interesting to see
how long the Carter partisans are able to
operate on the lofty plane they have cho
sen to occupy in the first months of the
precampaign.
A good guess: until the first creditable
Democratic challenger announces againt
the president.
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Only in America
Juries too liberal with insurance money
By LeROY POPE
United Press International
NEW YORK — The jury system, re
garded as a keystone of American liberty,
is coming under attack from the property
and casualty insurance industry.
The huge judgments obtained from
juries in personal injury cases by attorneys
such as Melvin Belli are leading to propo
sals that jury trials of personal injury cases
be abandoned or even outlawed.
Dr. Werner Pfenningstorf, a research
attorney for the American Bar Foundation
in Chicago, says nowhere in the world ex
cept America do juries any longer hear
personal injury cases. He says American
society soon will reach the point where it
no longer can tolerate “huge damage
awards and other abuses to the free
enterprise system.”
In an article in The Producer, a
magazine published by the big Crum &
Forster insurance group. Dr. Pfessingstorf
said he foresees the adoption in the United
States of some form of mandatory govern
ment property and casualty insurance
“similar to that which has been available in
Europe for hundreds of years. ”
Dr. Pfenningstorf said his own observa
tion of the jury system for personal injury
cases in the United States was that it could
work fairly well in smaller communities
“where people have a sense of responsibil
ity to each other,” but that it breaks down
in the large communities where litigants
and jurors are protected by relative
anonymity. There a public psychology de
velops that the insurance companies can
well afford to pay high damage awards.
However, in a booklet published by the
American Bar Foundation in 1975, Dr.
Pfenningstorf said that while jury trials in
personal injury cases are more expensive
than many other kinds of legal services,
only a minority of the cases actually go to
trial and the legal costs are small in com
parison with the judgments that may be
obtained.
In this booklet. Dr. Pfenningstorf de
voted much of his article to discussion of
the American phenomenon of the lawyers’
contingency fee for personal injury cases,
which is not permitted in European coun
tries. You can’t sue for auto accident in
juries in Europe without paying your
lawyer in cash and putting up money for
court costs. But there are mandatory gov
ernment insurance plans that provide
basic renumeration fairly promptly.
Some insurance leaders in the United
States have been campaigning for abolition
of the contingency lawyers’ fees in acci
dent cases for several years now. If con
tingency fees were abolished (although
hardly anybody believes that will happen)
the lawyer’s chance of making a killing out
of a jury trial of such a case would disap
pear.
Ironically, this opposition to the con
tingency fee is being raised in America at
the very time when British lawyers, seeing
the bonanzas made out of it by some of
their American contemporaries, are pro
posing that the contingency fee finally be
permitted in Britain.
Jury trials of personal injury cases were
common in Britain until 1940, although
not on a contingency fee basis, according
to an article in the August, 1977, number
of Best’s Review, another insurance trade
paper. But with the outbreak of World
War II and the total mobilization of Brit
ain’s manpower and womanpower, the ar
ticle said it became almost impossible to
impanel a jury for a civil accident injury
case.
After the war, jury trials of civil accident
cases were resumed but by 1966, Lord
Denning, chairman of the Court of Ap
peals, said they had virtually disappeared
and all personal injury damage cases tried
in Britain are heard by the judge alone.
Apparently there is no absolute right to
a jury trial of such a case in England and a
judge can refuse a jury trial if the plaintiff s
lawyer does not cite reasons for it the
judge considers imperative.
The article in Best’s Review, written by
John Griffith, a London Queen’s Counsel,
a type of lawyer peculiar to Britain, said
the British Bar and the British Public had
gravitated towards non-jury trials of civil
accident cases largely on the basis of three
considerations other than cost. He listed
these as:
Assessability — Judges are believed to
be better able than jurors to correctly as
sess the injuries and the proper compensa
tion.
Uniformity — Judges can be depended
on, where jurors cannot, to see that similar
claimants get similar compensation and
thus preserve the principle of democratic
fairness and protect the interest of the
community as well as those of the claim
ants and the defendants and their insur
ance companies.
Predictability — The English appear to
believe that the victim of an accident and
the person unfortunate enough to cause it
as well as the insurance companies ought
to be able to measure with some degree of
accuracy months in advance how the court
is likely to handle the matter. There
should be no shocking surprises as some
times are handed down by a runaway jury
in America.
The insurance people and some lawyers
are concerned about much more than the
question of whether or not jury trials of
personal cases should be gradually done
away with. They are concerned by a grow
ing psychology that “people are entitled to
legal redress if anyone or anything inter
feres with their ability to enjoy life,” said
Chicago lawyer Philip Corboy. He said
people seemed to believe society ought to
be risk-free.
To which San Francisco lawyer Scott
Conley added “this attitude is aided by the
belief that there must be of a pot of gold at
the end of every whiplash.”
Top of the News
LOCAL
Backgammon game for record
There will be a dance from 9 p.m. to 12 midnight Friday at Bee ?
Creek Pool in College Station. At 1:30 p.m. Saturday, there willbea *
diving show followed by a mammoth backgammon game on the |
painted empty pool floor using children as playing pieces in an at- k
tempt to make the Guiness Book of World Records. Children ages |
10-13 may register as playing pieces 1-3 p.m. Saturday.
HOU
will det
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' to inter]
jficers at
IConven
i day.
NATION
Fiedler s condition ‘stable’
Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler was reported in stable con
dition Monday and resting comfortably after suffering what was de
scribed as a “mild heart attack” this weekend.
The maestro, 84, who has suffered four other heart attacks, was
admitted to Tufts New England Medical Center in Boston Saturday
night and is expected to remain hospitalized for several more weeks
Crews searching for pipe leak
Crews dug up pipe in Alaska’s rugged Brooks Range Monday in
search of a leak that closed the $9 billion Trans Alaska pipeline and
sent crude oil oozing through a snowcovered mountain pass and into
the Atigun River. The accident deprives oil companies of more than
1.2 million barrels of precious “black gold” the pipeline has been
delivering daily to tankers at the southern Alaska port of Valdez. An
undetermined amount of oil leaked from the buried pipe at barren
Atigun Pass, about 165 miles south of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, and
was carried by a small stream into the Atigun River, Alyeska Pipeline
Services said. The leaking oil was spotted Sunday by a pilot flying
over the pass, who then landed at the pipeline’s Pump Station Nod
to notify officials and the entire system was shut down immediately
Supreme Court denies appeal
The Supreme Court Monday turned down an appeal by Bernard
Ferguson, who is on death row in Texas for the 1977 fatal stabbing of
an employee of a small grocery store during a robbery. The court let
stand Ferguson’s conviction and death sentence over the dissents of
Justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan. Ferguson was
convicted for the murder of Randy Tingle, an attendant at a small
grocery store in Killeen, Texas, during an armed robbery on Jan. 25,
1977. shortly before midnight. About $28 was taken from the cash
register. In his appeal, he urged the Supreme Court to reconsider its
1976 ruling upholding Texas’ capital punishment law, saying practical
experience shows the statute is vague and arbitrary and does not
permit proper consideration of mercy factors, such as age and lackofa
prior criminal record.
Defense lawyers said there was evidence, for instance, that Fergu
son had suffered a head injury and perhaps organic brain damage
when hit by a car at age 8. The lawyers also challenged a state courts
decision that admission of a blood analysis obtained without a search
warrant was a “harmless” error that did not require reversal of his
conviction. Ferguson s lawyers argued the death sentence was a dis
proportionate” penalty for a 17-year-old with no prior prison record,
although they conceded the murder was a "relatively brutal one in
which the victim was stabbed four times and the knife was twisted.
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WORLD
Pemex oil geyser still burning
Authorities in Campeche, Mexico say they have been unable to
stop a 30,000 barrel-a-day flaming oil geyser shooting up from the
depths of the Gulf of Mexico and threatening an environmental disas
ter in some of the world’s richest fishing waters. Officials in Cam
peche, the city closest to the government oil monopoly Petroleos 1
Mexicanos’ (Pemex) Ixtoc I well that exploded into an underwater |
volcano a week ago, said Sunday a team of firefighters made up of
Americans and Norwegians known as “The Red Devils,” had been
called in to battle the blaze. There were conflicting reports on the
size of the slick spreading in the bay, 500 miles southeast of Mexico
City.
Pemex said the well produced 30,000 barrels of oil a day, worth
$513,000 at $17.10 a barrel.
Americans to leave Nicaragua
Sandinista guerrillas fought Pcfent Anastasio Somoza’s troops in
Managua Monday in the first battles in the capital in a year, and the
United States arranged an armed convoy to the airport to begin
evacuating Americans. About 50 Americans went to the U.S. em
bassy in Managua Monday seeking help in reaching the airport, as
fighting erupted at sunrise between the Sandinistas and government
troops, who are attempting to stem the Sandinistas’ offensive to oust
Somoza. The Sandinistas already have captured the interior cities,
villages, hamlets and strategic hilltops along the southern border with
Costa Rica. In Washington, the Organization of American States
called a special session to discuss Nicaragua’s charges that the San
dinistas are being equipped with arms smuggled from Panama and
Cuba.
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