Ex-owner of pharmacy to speak in D.C.
By Jerry Mitchell
jmitchell@clarionledger.com
December 15, 2004 - Hilda Bankston of Fayette, the former pharmacy store owner in Jefferson County who was drawn into hundreds of pharmaceutical lawsuits, will speak today at the White House Conference on the Economy. President Bush is expected to attend the 12:30 p.m. session titled "The High Costs of Lawsuit Abuse" that will include the CEO of Home Depot, Bob Nardelli, and Philip K. Howard, author of The Collapse of the Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines our Freedom.
The national and Mississippi economies continue to grow modestly, said state economist Phil Pepper. "The U.S. has slow growth with some stutter steps," he said. "The same thing is true in the Mississippi economy. The state is expected to have .8 percent growth in employment in 2004." Neither economy is rebounding quickly, he said. "We lost those manufacturing jobs, but we're not bouncing back that fast. We sort of peaked in 2000. It'll be 2007 before we're back to where we were in 2000."
The Los Angeles Times has called the conference — featuring discussions on tax simplification, job training, health care and even Social Security restructuring — "hand-picked panels of business supporters and contributors."
It won't be the first time Bankston — who owned the Bankston Drugstore from 1971 until 2000 when she sold it — has spoken in Washington. In 2002, she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about how her husband, Mitch, died in 1999, weeks after being sued over fen-phen. "In our small town, news travels fast and reputation is everything," she said. "Within three weeks, my husband, a 58-year-old in good health, died suddenly of a massive heart attack."
In a telephone call Tuesday from Washington, Bankston said she is excited about speaking with Bush today for the first time. In Mississippi, Bankston has been a poster child for those pushing tort reform, an example of a small business being sued repeatedly in drug litigation for filling a doctor's prescription. In just one case, she was sued by 350 different individuals "from all over the country," she said. And when she learned the premiums on her liability insurance would triple, she sold the business, she said. "I got out just in time."
Since 2000, the Legislature has passed a variety of caps on damages, first on medical malpractice litigation and later on all litigation involving noneconomic damages, such as "pain and suffering." Since February, the state Supreme Court has limited joining plaintiffs in mega-product liability lawsuits, ordering separate trials and removing out-of-state plaintiffs.
Pam Johnson, communications director for the Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association, said Mississippi became a test for "what soon came to be crises in states all over the country ... the same rhetoric, the same claims, the same lack of evidence." In his push for national tort reform, Bush has visited Mississippi, calling for caps on damages.
E. Farish Percy, professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law, said it will be difficult for the United States to adopt a "one-size-fits-all" approach to tort reform — an issue she believes is better handled by the states. "It's much more complicated than anyone has been willing to talk about," she said.
For example, stock market losses have affected insurance companies writing medical malpractice insurance, she said. "In the last great insurance crisis in the 80s, insurers greatly overestimated their losses. I would not be surprised if the exact same thing occurs here." Statistics also show caps on damages aren't halting rises in malpractice insurance rates, she said. "Malpractice insurance in states that have had tort reform have seen rates rise significantly over recent years. Caps aren't going to prevent rate increases if there's a hard market (where interest rates are low)."
In Bankston's mind, there's no question she lost her business to lawsuit abuse, which she said has "affected the whole state of Mississippi and certainly Jefferson County." Twelve Fayette residents have been charged — and six of them have pleaded guilty — in a joint FBI and IRS criminal investigation with submitting false claims to take part in a $400 million fen-phen settlement. The diet drug was removed from the market in 1997. Bankston said people in Fayette "are willing to work because most of them are good people, but they're now having to travel to Vicksburg or Natchez, 25 or 30 miles, maybe farther, to work in casinos and construction," she said.
Jefferson County had the second-highest unemployment rate in the state in October — 18.2 percent. Bankston is living on a farm there. "We used to have cattle, but now we grow timber," she said. So, does this mean she won't get sued anymore? "You never know," she said. "A tree might fall on somebody."