For years the mantra of the Republican party has been that we need to reduce “frivolous lawsuits.” The din has been deafening during the recent health care debate in Washington. As soon as the President began to sign the health care bill into law, state Attorneys General (including Attorney General Corbett in Pennsylvania) did what to challenge the law? They filed a lawsuit!

My friend Anthony Tarricone, President of the American Association for Justice (of which I am a Governor from Pennsylvania) has authored a great piece that was carried by the Huffington Post: “Tort Reform Hypocrites: Do As I Say, Not As I Sue”. I commend Anthony’s article to any of you who understand the hypocrisy of the lawsuits filed to challenge the health care bill.

So let me come back to a concept you’ll hear a lot about as these cases churn their way through the courts: pre-emption. It’s the constitutional law concept that is defined as follows by Black’s Law Dictionary (the dictionary that every law student swears by as we are taught in law school): “Doctrine adopted by U.S. Supreme Court holding that certain matters are of such a national, as opposed to local, character that federal laws pre-empt or take precedence over state laws.” In other words, states don’t get to say that a federal law (read: the health care bill) is illegal under state law.

Anthony’s article cited several prominent examples of tort reform hypocrisy in his article. In Pennsylvania we had our own version when Rick Santorum was our U. S. Senator. After he had railed against frivolous lawsuits for years, guess who filed one with his wife after she was injured as a result of health care malpractice? That’s right Mr. and Mrs. Santorum. In the interest of full disclosure I must point out that when it became politically expedient for the senator to continue railing against trial lawyers, he discontinued his part of the suit…while Mrs. Santorum’s claims continued.

This story will be an interesting one to follow.