Taxpayers last year paid $398,000 to a Tooele woman for her backward tumble off a concrete staircase at the Dugway Proving Grounds.
Lynette Gilmore fell three feet to the ground - winning more than $130,000 for every foot she fell.Two years ago a Utah jury awarded $8 million to 6-year-old James Vesely. The boy had been left with several physical handicaps because of his difficult birth. After a 3 1/2-week trial, a state jury concluded that FHP and Dr. Gary Matravers were responsible for his handicaps.
The award was the largest medical malpractice verdict in the state's history.
Proponents of legal reform may point to stories like Gilmore's and James Vesely's as examples of litigation run amok.
"It has been estimated that each year the United States spends some $300 billion as an indirect cost of the civil justice system," Republican leaders say in their Contract with America.
"In fact, in 1989 alone, 18 million civil lawsuits were filed in state and federal courts - amounting to one lawsuit for every 10 adults."
Lawsuits over slips and tumbles typically top the list of personal injury suits people believe are frivolous.
Many agree with state Sen. Charles Stewart: "Somebody goes down the slippery slide and falls off and the citizens are liable for that? Gee, I fell off the slippery slide 100 times. Things have just changed."
Hefty verdicts like the Vesely verdict are often cited as a reason for change. Stewart is a plastic surgeon. Massive medical malpractice verdicts drive up malpractice insurance costs for physicians into the tens of thousands of dollars a year.
"It's definitely high," he said. "But it's the patients who pay for it. Not me."
The owners of water parks, taxi cab companies and amusement centers pass their insurance costs on, too, he said.
"It's the paying customer that pays. It affects all of us."
But what are we paying for?
Taxpayers bought Lynette Gilmore a chance for an independent life. She was already handicapped before she fell. She had contracted viral encephalitis in 1982 at the age of 24, nearly dying from it. The disease left her with slurred speech, poor balance and sluggish motor skills.
Eight years later, she fell. Her right leg twisted under her, shattering under her weight. When it healed, it was shorter than her left leg.
"I attempted to go back to work, but it was really a drain on the muscles in my back because my legs are different lengths. Basically, I'm retired."
She sued the federal government because she believes the stairs on the government building were unsafe. The government settled with Gilmore a week before trial.
Before the settlement, "I was living well below the poverty line. I couldn't pay my rent, so I moved into my grandmother's house. A relative paid my utilities. I had about $200 a month and basically that went for food."
Now, she owns her own home in Tooele. She's going to college.
FHP offered to settle with the Veselys for an amount less than the $8 million the jury awarded. Benta Vesely accepted the undisclosed sum, believed to be well into the millions of dollars.
But those millions mean James will be taken care of for the rest of his life. The money allows Benta, a single mother, to stay at home with her son.
Right now, the money has bought James equipment that has helped him catch up with his classmates in school. He can even walk, with the aid of a walker and someone to assist him.
At trial two years ago, he could not.
James was brain-damaged when his mother's uterus ruptured while she was in labor with him. Vesely had had a previous Caesarean section. The jury concluded Matravers should have performed a C-section on Vesely this time, too, instead of letting her go into labor, the jury concluded.
James twitches spasmodically. He struggles with his speech. But he now has feeding chairs, wheelchairs, more physical therapy and a program that helps him communicate, Vesely said.
"He's really progressing. He's at his age level cognitively."
Vesely's family is one of those who might not have sued if there had been a chance that they would have had to pay FHP's attorneys fees. Proposed legislation would require losers of federal lawsuits to pay the winner's attorney's fees and Republicans have said they will encourage states to adopt similar reforms in their courtrooms. FHP hired a team of top attorneys to battle that case.
Even without the risk of paying the other side's fees, suing a hospital or doctor is very costly for the victim and his lawyer, said Roger Christensen, attorney for Vesely.
"On the medical side, you have the wealth and the resources. It's not hard for a doctor or hospital who are sued to find an unlimited number of other doctors and hospitals who will testify in their behalf. They've got the insurance and all the resources to pay for that.
"But the victim, particularly if it's a victim who has had a bad injury, is often in a terrible economic position," he said. Add to that the high cost of a plaintiff's trial.
"Most doctors won't testify against another doctor. The ones that will generally charge very high fees for doing it. They will also only testify in a state where they don't practice. So you have to fly this very expensive expert in to testify for you.
"Those kinds of things make it tough on victims of malpractice to even pursue their claims." To add to that the threat of paying the other side's legal fees means "you are going to put the victims in the position where losing means bankruptcy," Christensen said.
Critics of multimillion-dollar awards for injured people don't understand the high cost of intensive medical care, said attorney David Olsen.
Olsen has won several hefty settlements and verdicts for his clients in the last few years. Some of them have been more than $5 million, he said.
"But not one of those people is getting a windfall. All of this money is for survival," he said.
"The money in these cases teaches people to walk, to talk, to take care of themselves. It's taught them how to get other jobs and provided them with money to eat with."
If politicians want to limit damages, what things should these people go without, Olsen asked. "Are they going to take away their doctors, their food, their physical therapy?"