[Ohioan]

You need to understand that those lawyers who bedevil honest business or other professions with contrived suits--including many of the high profile "class actions"--are only a very tiny percentage of the profession--or of the Trial lawyers in the profession. I agree that those who have brought many of these high profile cases, seeking to blame businesses for all the problems of humanity, are a menace. However, they have been succeeding because of a number of reasons, which go to a mucher deeper, Socialist mindset, which the Class-Action lawyers are hardly the principal cause for.

As for the mess in the medical profession, I would agree that overly aggressive lawyers have certainly had a major impact. But consider, also, the even greater impact of the Federal involvement via Medicare and Medicaid. (See Medicare--Panacea or Death Potion!.)

We are on a collision course with total economic disaster in America, and while it is amusing to seek to blame specific players, very few--even among the alarmists--are really willing to take on the overall situation, head on.

William Flax

[weikel]

Ussually I agree with you but no dice the Federal government is run almost entirely by lawyers has been for over a century. As Mencken said

"All the extravagance and incompetence of our present Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half." –H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), "Breathing Space", The Baltimore Evening Sun, 1924 Aug 4. Reprinted in A Carnival of Buncombe.