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AMERICAN BILLBOARD 2-FRIVOLOUS ADS

Following the lead of our tort reform brethren, this website will continue its crusade to reduce the cost of products to the American consumer by stamping out expensive, frivolous advertising.  The cost of such advertising is a direct add on to the cost of goods and services paid for by the American public.  These frivolous ads tell us nothing about the inherent value of a product.  Why should you and I subsidize greedy advertising executives?  Why should manufacturers of good products be forced to compete with the makers of the cheap and the shoddy, just because the makers of junk have hired hot shot ad execs?  Why should a venerable old insurance company have to develop its own talking reptile (with comic accent) to  merely to compete with GEICO?  How much does GEICO spend on the talking lizard?  Don't we all pay higher premiums as a result.  Huh?  HUH??!!

Today we have a magzine ad.  Can you guess what is being sold?

Bowling balls?

Tooth whitener?

Low cut, gravity-defying women's tops?

Breast implants?

No, no, no and no.  Now here is the original ad, with the product information included:

Men's shoe polish, of course, because the shine on your shoes will really "bowl them over".  Not that the young lady is looking at your shoes.  Frankly, no reader is either.

Contact your Congressperson immediately.  This frivolous advertising must be stamped out.  I am sure even the Tea Party can get behind government intervention on this.

I'll have to stop this rant now, so I can watch the Capital One Bowl.  Those Viking, Vandal, Barbarian or whatever ads just "slay" me.

NEW CATEGORY-AMERICAN BILLBOARD: HOW CAN WE PREVENT FRIVOLOUS ADVERTISING?

While I have never been a part of the “tort reform” movement, never let it be said that I didn’t want to do my bit to help the American consumer.

It has been said that the American tort law system costs something in the neighborhood of 240 billion dollars per year.  How tort reformers figure this out eludes my understanding.  Anyway, this cost, reformers say is always passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices for goods and services.  America, tort reformers say, must reduce this cost we all pay by reducing what they call “frivolous” lawsuits.  If you look closely, you will find that by “frivolous” lawsuits, tort reformers mean all lawsuits brought by individuals seeking damages.  By the way, you may also notice that tort reformers, usually led by the local and national Chambers of Commerce, never consider lawsuits filed by businesses as frivolous.  They want no restrictions imposed on such suits, even if when Barbie sues Bratz over the proprietary rights over little dollies.  By the way, one of the sides in that case wants to recover its attorney fees, over $100,000,000 allegedly, from the other.  I can find no legal reform group that has made the Barbie-Bratz case a poster child for change in the court system.

I see very little in the tort reform movement that can’t be reduced to a simple attempt to control a business cost, no different than other attempts to control such items as price of steel, employee benefits or business taxes.  The same philosophy motivates tort reform as motivates the outsourcing of American jobs to third world countries-lower business costs and higher business profits. 

Tort reformers really have no concern about the American legal system.  They claim the legal system is over-crowded with these alleged “frivolous” suits.  We must get rid of these meritless suits, for the sake of our legal system, not just for the sake of corporate profits.  Well, what is the polar opposite of a meritless case?  A meritorious case, certainly.  Tort reformers would want to leave these alone, surely.  No, not really.  Tort reformers want protection on both ends.  If any cases get through whatever net is constructed to eliminate the allegedly “frivolous” suits, damages must be limited by caps on liability, imposed by the legislatures at the request of the tort reformers.   Eliminate the meritless, limit the meritorious, shoot the “trial lawyers” (no proposed tort reform legislation on that—yet, though stay tuned).