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Brendan Smith

Legal Times

01-11-2008

In its latest critique of personal injury attorneys, the American Tort Reform Association is highlighting a study by the New York-based Center for Medicine in the Public Interest as "the latest evidence that the personal injury bar's brazen trolling for clients [on the Internet] is taking an increasingly negative toll on society," ATRA President Sherman "Tiger" Joyce said Thursday in a statement.

The study found that people seeking online medical advice often receive unreliable information from numerous Internet sources, including class action/litigation sites that "cannot be relied upon for balanced and accurate information." The study by the center, which describes its agenda as "research driven," also criticized medical forums or blogs, anti-pharmaceutical activist sites, alternative treatment sites and incomplete or misleading media reports on medical issues.

"Much like our e-mail boxes are filled by 'spam' urging us to collect millions from Nigeria or confirm our banking information from phony eBay or Bank of America security sites, much of the medical `information' on the Web is designed to sell, deceive or frighten, rather than inform," the study states.

The ATRA is calling for congressional oversight hearings and for all State Bar associations to require that lawyers clearly identify themselves on Web sites they sponsor. The American Association for Justice, formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, quickly fired off a response Thursday, with President Kathleen Flynn Peterson calling the study laughable at best" and saying its "dubious methodology consists of nothing but Google searches."

"It's no surprise that the big drugmakers are trying to buy studies to avoid responsibility for their drugs that have harmed people," Peterson says.

Peter Pitts, president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, says the nonprofit center is primarily funded by pharmaceutical companies, but he says the center's studies are still independent and are not funded by any individual donor. Pitts also defended the use of Google searches as part of the study.

"If the AAJ wants to belittle Google, they should talk to their members, who are one of Goggle's largest advertising revenue sources," he says.