Ex-Supreme Court Nominee Robert Bork Suing Yale Club for Personal Injuries

Robert Bork, a tort reform advocate who once criticized juries for handing out "lottery-like windfalls" in personal injury cases, has found himself on the other side of the fence recently. Bork has been severely criticized and even called hypocritical by some for his recent $1 million personal injury lawsuit against the Yale Club. Bork was set to give a speech at the Yale Club of New York last June when he allegedly fell backward while trying to mount a platform. Bork’s personal injury lawsuit claimed that the Yale Club failed to provide stairs between the floor and the dais and that he suffered personal injuries which required surgery and physical therapy. The 80-year-old Bork also claimed that he now walks with a cane and a limp because of the fall, and sued for unspecified punitive damages and actual damages for pain and suffering, medical treatment, and losing income and time at work.

Bork’s personal injury lawsuit especially drew the ire in this editorial in The New York Times. Of further interest, Bork was a federal appeals judge in Washington from 1982 to 1988. He was once nominated to the Supreme Court by late President Ronald Reagan in 1987, but the Senate denied this request.