California is among the top six states in trial lawyer ad spending, according to a new study.
“California has been a perpetual judicial hellhole and from our perspective, the whole purpose of these reports that we've been developing is to highlight the full scope of the mass tort’s game plan from the plaintiff's bar," said Tiger Joyce, president of the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA). "This is a significant part of their marketing arm.”
The ATRA’s Legal Services Advertising report found that California trial lawyers spent $594,418,668 million overall on 5,307,533 ads from 2017 to 2021.
Nationwide, trial lawyers spent $1.4 billion on trial advertising during that period.
“They do it because it's effective,” Joyce told the Southern California Record. “It’s a way to build up the scope of these claims. So that just the overall aggregate numbers in and of themselves become a driving factor in the litigation.”
The ATRA data further found that $85.3 million was spent on 809,000 television ads, $22,235,180 million on 382,364 radio ads and $24,963,369 on outdoor ads in California, alone.
“We're not surprised that California is very close to the top of the list and that, as much as anything, needs to be factored into any number of decisions about policy with regard to the overall civil justice system,” Joyce said.
Although the state of California is much bigger than the state of Florida, the Sunshine state outranked the Golden state in spending $885,774,912 million on 9,349,145 ads overall.
“The real challenge when you're dealing with numbers like this is ferreting out who may really actually have a legitimate claim,” Joyce said. “Just the sheer volume of the number of cases makes that untenable as opposed to someone who has truly experienced a negative impact.”
A 2019 FDA report found 66 incidents of adverse events following patients who discontinued the use of blood thinner medications, such as Pradaxa, Xarelto, Eliquis, or Savaysa, after viewing a lawyer advertisement.
About 98% of patients, whose median age was 70 years old, stopped taking the medication without consulting with their doctor, according to an ATRA press release, with 33% of patients experiencing a stroke, 24 experiencing another serious injury, and seven people dying.
“The reality is that all these pharmaceutical products that we take have side effects, and that's something that is analyzed by the FDA in approving them and issuing potential warnings,” Joyce added. “In the pharmaceutical area, there should be at least admonitions to consult your doctor first before stopping a medication.”