Posted on 03/28/2011 8:35:55 AM PDT by Heather Landstrom
Trial Lawyers: Why We Love to Hate Them By John R. Smith for Bizpac Review What is it that makes trial attorneys and personal injury lawyers the most despised group, except for career politicians and organized labor? Maybe it's because of the practices they engage in and the morality of their actions. Let’s sift through the evidence and see if we can find it in our hearts to pity the trial lawyers...Click here to read more.
(Excerpt) Read more at bizpacreview.com ...
Somebody has to dig sewers, and somebody has to use the sewers. What would happen to the sewer diggers if the sewer users quit using the sewers? Why, they’d be out of work, or worse yet, they’d become lawyers. Every time I flush, I proudly proclaim, “Here’s to keeping another good kid from a life of bickering and avarice.”
I hate them because over 90% of them are democrats and 100% of them are souless liars.
Sewer diggers at least produce something useful to the public at large when they are done.
Trial lawyers tear down working businesses, disembowel individual defendants, bankrupt insurance companies so the rest of us have trouble managing our risks, cheat the client in whose name the suits were filed and walk away with most of the proceeds of the successful suits. They are lying, venal parasites and should be limited in numbers and effect on the rest of us. I am a retired lawyer and have seen the beast in its native habitat.
But the small print at the end of their TV ads state they will most likely will turn (sell) your case over to a more qualified attorney.
Delaware accepted the contingent fee as a legal contract in 1840, NJ in the 1860's and California in the 1870's. Canon 13 was put to use in 1908. So as the author winds up to hurl the dishonesty stone, he begins with a lie.
this social/moral compact
A contingent fee contract is just that - a contract, nothing more.
The plaintiffs trial bar morphed from a group that was supposed to include high-risk, low-return cases in their work (in order to fulfill the moral covenant) into a group that turned their backs on cases that were potentially unprofitable to the attorneys.
So no mention of incorporating the cost of injuries caused by dangerous or defective conditions into the cost of doing business? After all, why would we want to have a society where those who cause others to be injured accept personal responsibility for their actions. It is better for society when culpable parties go scot free and the injured are put on the public dole. Things are safer that way, right?
trial lawyers are a drain on our economy, mostly because the "good" they do ends up as money in their own pockets.
The straw man argument continues - the contingent fee contract has nothing to do with a "moral covenant." Lawyers just became better at securing larger awards than people who have no idea how to direct a real life recreation (jury trial experience). I bet the author thinks it unfair that George Lucas makes movies, while Hollywood outsiders never get a chance.
The legal fees that are spent defending frivolous lawsuits bleed our precious capital, which could be used to invest productively to fuel jobs and expand businesses.
"Frivolous lawsuits," i.e. as case with legal or factual justification are extraordinarily trivial in number and cost as compared to "meritorious cases," i.e. ones that the Court will dismiss without a jury trial or determination by a fact finder.
Often, these officers of the court are moreso businessmen colluding with plaintiffs to extort money from businesses. Legal extortion is still extortion.
Spell check anybody?
Extortion is, "Taking by color of an office of money or other thing of value, that is not due, before it is due or more than is due." So, when a jury returns a verdict, how can that be extortion?
The simple reason we hate trial lawyers is that most of them lie, cheat, and steal.
“This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.