INFLATION IN THE COURTROOM

An Associated Press story reported this week that for the first time eight of the nation's 10 largest jury verdicts topped $100 million each last year. Altogether, the 10 biggest jury awards totaled $2.8 billion, according to Lawyer's Weekly USA, a Boston-based publication that has been compiling such a list since 1989. In 1989, the largest verdict was $75 million, a figure that wouldn't have made it onto this year's list. "Now you can have a $50 million award, and it isn't even in the newspaper," said Victor Schwartz, general counsel to the American Tort Reform Association.

Well, yes and no. Schwartz' comment may be true across the country, especially among larger urban newspaper, but this newspaper last week reported a $5.2 million verdict awarded by a Scott County jury against Missouri Delta Medical Center in Sikeston. The award went to a Southeast Missouri family whose child suffered brain damage at birth. Missouri Delta officials sharply dispute the finding of liability and pledge that if they fail with a motion to have the verdict set aside, they will appeal.

Our concern is less with a verdict in a heartbreaking fact situation such as that confronting this family than it is with runaway inflation that routinely sees jury verdict in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Somehow, someone is going to have to impose some reason on the runaway lotteries run by the trial lawyers.

"Inflation is under control in the country, but not in the courtroom," said Thomas Harrison, publisher of Lawyers Weekly USA. That is a judgment with which many business leaders of both large and small enterprises -- worried about today's continuing litigation explosion and how to pay the bills -- will certainly agree.