The urgent need for tort reform. The politicians demonize doctors while giving a pass to lawyers. Is it the gravy train?

Time to cut New York’s sky-high litigation costs

New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton was understandably outraged by the news this past week that the city shelled out $5,000 to settle a lawsuit by criminal Ruhim ­Ullah, who was shot in the leg by a cop in 2010 after he charged officers with a machete.

The payout sent the disturbing signal that crime does pay.

In New York, as in most states but almost no other industrialized country, the winner of a lawsuit pays his own legal expenses, so it’s often cheaper to settle than to go to trial.

And lawsuits are particularly expensive in New York. To understand why, we need only look to another recent legal story unfolding in downtown Manhattan: the indictment of longtime Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on federal corruption charges.

Silver’s indictment alleges that the former speaker worked to funnel $500,000 in state money to a prominent New York doctor who specializes in asbestos-related lung ailments. The doctor, in turn, funneled patients to Silver’s law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg. Those patients turned into clients with lawsuits worth ­millions.

Asbestos litigation is the nation’s longest-running mass tort, going on 50 years, and law firms heavily advertise to find new “victims.” In 2008, 20 of the 30 most-expensive paid Google search terms involved asbestos.

The Weitz firm is one of the nation’s most prominent asbestos-litigation firms. Silver was a paid “counsel” to the firm, earning more than $5 million over the years, according to the indictment.

Many of us working to ­reform the state’s legal system have long wondered what, if anything, the former speaker did in the way of actual legal work. The federal indictment alleges that the answer is ­essentially nothing.

Nevertheless, the firm’s investment in the former speaker has paid off handsomely. Silver, as Assembly speaker, has worked to kill off any efforts to cut New York’s litigation costs.

And those costs are among the nation’s highest. A 2010 study by the Pacific Research Institute looked at tort-liability costs among all 50 states, adjusted for the size of each state’s economy. New York ranked 49th out of the 50 states in commercial and other liability costs, and dead last in medical-malpractice liability.

The state’s outsized tort costs hit not just businesses and doctors but also taxpayers. Last year, New York City shelled out a record $732 million in legal costs.

Though financially just a blip, the machete-man settlement illustrates the problem of a system that encourages frivolous lawsuits and immense payouts. Thanks in part to ­Silver’s efforts, the city couldn’t win.

Cutting the taxpayer’s bill would require comprehensive tort reform, and with Silver in the speaker’s chair, that was always a nonstarter. Perhaps now we can start.