Changing the U.S. tort system will have little effect on the economy and might even hurt job creation, according to a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute, in Washington, D.C.

"Tort litigation has been blamed for a host of ills: driving liability insurance premiums to excessive levels, reducing real wages and overall employment, undermining corporate profits, dampening productivity growth, and discouraging research and development," wrote the study's authors, economist Lawrence Chimerine and attorney Ross Eisenbrey. "But macroeconomic trends since the early 1990s are especially inconsistent with the argument that supposedly high and rapidly rising tort costs have inflicted serious harm on the economy."

Despite the fact that the legal system's critics continue to argue that a tort liability crisis warrants changing the system, Chimerine and Eisenbrey found no credible evidence linking civil litigation activity to the nation's economic ills. The authors targeted annual reports from Tillinghast-Towers Perrin on the costs of the U.S. tort system, calling them flawed and one-sided. Any arguments based on data in these reports also are unreliable, Chimerine and Eisenbrey caution. In particular, they cited the president's three-member Council of Economic Advisors 2004 report, which drew extensively on TTP's estimates for its facts.