Education time
1. Most lawyers don’t do plaintiffs’ personal injury work. “Ambulance chasers” are a small part of the profession, and a lot of other lawyers are just as unhappy about the abuses as anyone else.
2. Lawyers who can joke about the profession are a GOOD thing. The oh-so-earnest ones are a whole lot scarier than anybody organizing an “ambulance chase” footrace.
OK, I’ll get off the soapbox now.
Actually…
I have been told to padlock the playground we built and maintain, lest a kid gets hurt using the structure when we are not there.
I said the point of not having a padlock is that the kids and families CAN use the playground when we’re not there.
I choose to make the insurance companies my “boogie man.” My brother-in-law is a lawyer and I would not want to call him a dispicable bum across the dinner table. 
sing
We have found the enemy and it is us
Ambulance chasers notwithstanding, isn’t blaming lawyers for the lawsuit abuses another form of not taking responsibility for our own actions?
Lawyers take on clients because those clients are looking for someone else to blame. If everybody were like waterdoc, this kind of abuse would not take place.
Sad to see that the trend towards blaming anybody but oneself is just getting worse. Let’s hope the waterdocs of the world can counteract the “it’s never my fault” people.
Lots of blame to go around
There are bad lawyers, bad clients, and bad insurance companies, not to mention a goodly amount of dumb tort law. Unfortunately, enacting the legislative agenda of the bad insurance companies isn’t really a good fix for the bad lawyers, and vice versa. It would be nice if we could bring the culture back toward the idea that bringing a lawsuit is generally a disreputable thing to do (although sometimes it needs to be done), but I’m not holding my breath.
Just Joking…
– Last Updated: Dec-02-04 4:05 PM EST –
PB got it right the "enemy" is "us" (in the overall sense).
Long time ago, I worked at another community center which had a track that wound it's way around over an indoor basketball court. Some kid snuck in on the off hours and tried to jump from the track onto a mat on the basketball court. He missed and broke his leg. When I heard about it the following Monday, I felt bad about the kid since I knew his family was not in great financial shape. I had a staff call the family to get some info so we can try to cover him under our insurance umbrella. This way the family can get some covered medical attention. The parents would not take our calls, despite repeated attempts. Finally, I got a notice from a lawyer saying that the family was suing us for negligence. Well, hell schmell, that got my blood boiling. At that point, I was willing to pay more in legal fees than for a proposed settlement just to see to it that the family get nothing from the center.
Yeah, we won. :)
sing
Yeah, I know... I can be pretty petty.
I know
Didn’t take your remark out of place at all, just kind of despairing about the whole mess. I agree absolutely that the larger problem is “us”–too deeply rooted in where our culture is now to be easily solved–but calling out the bad actors can be kind of fun from time to time, too.
It’s a two-way street
Trial attorneys have done a great job of indoctrinating American society with the “victim mentality”…whenever something bad happens, it must be someone else’s fault. People naturally look for someone to sue. Lawyers are allowed to openly solicit clients now, hence the barage of TV and radio ads. The fact that there are lots of high profile cases where people cashed in big on their own stupidity makes it look like idiocy is virtue and that insurance companies are nothing but a cash cows for the irresponsible and stupid in our society. The legal profession bears a large part of the blame for creating this situation. The remainder is pure greed on the part of the public.
It’s long past time for tort reform!
Define "tort reform"
It’s one of those political terms that sounds like a good response to very real abuses but often turns out to mean “businesses can do anything they want to anybody.” There ought to be lots of room in the middle for a reasonable outcome, but I think we’re more likely to see big business pushing for everything they can possibly get.
It’s a big issue…
…but some key elements are:
- Reducing the number of contingency cases, by making the lawyers and/or their clients responsible for the other parties legal fees if they lose a case. This is the British “loser pays” system.
- Reducing junk lawsuits by screening them out before they go to court.
- Reducing frivolous class-action suits where no harm is actually done by the defendent. Companies are being sued for little more than typos in advertising literature.
- Setting limits on damage awards. Juries are simply out of control in this regard.
- Demanding that the scientific evidence be complete before allowing suits to proceed, where appropriate. It does no good if a product is exonerated AFTER the the suits have been settled in or out of court. This happens all the time.
No one is advocating that TRUE negligence should be allowed to slide, but the the pendulum has swung WAY too far in the other direction and needs to be brought back to center. Rewarding people for stupidity hurts everyone except the greedy lawyers and their stupid + greedy clients.