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Ann:
I will bet you $5 per case that no one on this board can come up with a citation to the cases that are recounted in your post to prove that they actually exist. If any real cases come to light, I will pay the $5, but I will also bet $25 that an examination of the court record will reveal that there were other highly pertinent facts that are conveniently not included in the synopses floating about the Net.
Take No. 1:
January 2000: Kathleen Robertson of Austin Texas was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running amok inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving tyke was Ms. Robertson's son.
This writeup implies that the toddler's running amok was the proximate cause for the injury. But if you look carefully, you find that is merely an inference the casual reader takes from the synopsis. It says only that she was awarded money AFTER breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler. We no not know if there were other factors involved. It's entirely possible that Ms. Robertson was actually backing up to avoid an irate store employee and tripped over her child. It's possible she was running to stop him from being run over by a fork lift whose operator did not see him.
Look at No. 5:
May 2000: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, PA, $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her coccyx. The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson threw it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.
On the surface it seems ridiculous. BUT! The report does not claim a nexus between either the injury or the spilled soft drink and the award. The restaurant owner may have come over and maced Ms. Carson after she had fallen. It could be that the owner put her into handcuffs and she claimed false imprisonment. It could be that the owner refused to call for medical help. The writeup does not say that the award was compensation for the broken tailbone. There could be a million reasons why the award (if it really exists) was granted.
Then take a critical look at no. 6.
December 1997: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the lady's room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.
Similarly, there is neither a claimed nor a reported nexus between the injury and the award. It could be that an employee came into the restroom, observed Ms. Walton's attempted entry, and pulled her out of the window, with the push itself causing the injury. Perhaps they strip-searched her and dragged her naked and in handcuffs through the nightclub.
There is a glibness to these reports that raises my inherited reporter's hackles.
TEd
TEd
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RE: Look at No. 5:
May 2000: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, PA, $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her coccyx. The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson threw it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.
Like TEd, i read the accounts and wondered what was missing.. in this case, i wondered about the flooring. it is to expected, that a place that serves food, will have some food mishap. some flooring resists getting slippy when wet, other flooring get noticable slippier.. if the restaurant had the later kind, i would hold them partial responsible..
a restaurant has to expect that there will occationaly be some spillage of water, soda, and other liquids.-- it doesn't matter to me if it accidental, or perhaps playful spilled, (or even, in a classical, comedic way, thrown at some one.) so it should be sure to have flooring that resists getting slippy when wet. NYC subways are filled with this flooring.. its very attactive, and looks like terrazzo, but its like very fine grit sandpaper, even when wet. its hard to slip on it.
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"While others rise by thier gravity, I fall by my levity"
att: Adlai Stevenson
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wow, I'm sorry that my link didn't work for you (have others had a problem?). the article I cited didn't get into this (seemingly) frivolous kind of litigation, but talked about a couple of theories as to why lawyers are so poorly regarded. one is the "'dentist theory' based on the observation that people encounter lawyers at unhappy, painful times in their lives"; the other (more viable) one is the "'bartender theory', which begins with the observation that clients actively seek out many of the lawyers' worst attributes. The vindictive spouse looks for the carpet-bombing divorce lawyer; the dishonest business wants shady help in stiffing its creditors; the person nursing a dubious injury claim looks for the skilled exaggerator."
if we want to get at the real reasons behind the state of the "bar" in the US, we should take a look at these ideas rather than just debunking the urban legends. but that's just me.
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The link worked fine for me.
As to how lawyers work (and I sleep with one, so I have some close-hand knowledge):
Attorneys represent people who believe they need justice (at least in the context we've been discussing, there are of course other reasons people hire attorneys). They are not there to "create" cases. In fact, there is the offense of barratry, pretty much specific to attorneys, and being defined as the vexatious and persistent incitement of lawsuits. An attorney who commits barratry goes beyond ambulance chasing, and will eventually be disbarred or worse.
But I digress. An attorney is only a learned spokesperson for a client and will usually tell a client that his or her lawsuit has or does not have a chance of winning. There is also the problem of frivolous lawsuits, which an attorney is trained to recognize and avoid at all costs, since he or she is the one who'll get disbarred if there are too many of them. It is not the attorneys who are causing all of the lawsuits in the US; it's the greedy plaintiffs who hope to get something for nothing. Without plaintiffs there wouldn't be anywhere near as many attorneys as there are now. They'd all starve to death.
I believe that most educated people would recognize a lawsuit based primarily upon greed as opposed to one in which there truly was or was perceived to be an injury requiring redress. And most of them would believe that most of those Ann listed are, on the surface at least, lawsuits based upon greed.
I'll give you a concrete example. My brother drives cars about 20 years old because he cannot afford anything else. Some time back, he said to me, "And this guy skidded up behind me and missed the rear end of my truck by about two inches. If he'd hit me, I'd have sued him and they'd have given me a brand new truck."
It was literally impossible to convince him that the person's liability to him (other than for injury) would have been limited to the value of his truck (probably $500 or so). "Nope, they'da owed me a new pickup truck. And I'da gone for the expensive one, you can bet your ass." It is this attitude that you can get something for nothing that in the end demonizes the legal profession. People tend to think that attorneys are the cause of this greed, and not simply the spokespersons for it.
Many attorneys won't touch this sort of case, though there are others that go out of their way to take them. Here in Denver we have a guy named Andy Cameron who is always advertising for people with personal injuries to call him so he can get "as much money for you as we can." Believe it or not, in one of these commercials he is sitting at a desk with a dog sitting on a chair beside him. The ad captions the dog as "legal analyst." Peggy assures me that in North Carolina Andy would have been disbarred long ago for having besmirched the legal profession.
But these are the bottom feeders and are in no way indicative of the overall ethics and quality of the legal profession, which I personally hold in high regard.
Oh! Almost forgot. In the article tsuwm mentioned, there is the following:
Alan Dershowitz, when criticized for some of his stratagems in criminal defense--things like telling the client on first meeting, "Don't tell me whether you're guilty or not; it would tie my hands to know; leave me free to come up with the best defense"--has defended himself by saying, Look, if your kid were arrested and charged with something, you'd want a lawyer just like me.
The reality of it is: If a defendant tells an attorney that he is guilty, the attorney is ethically barred from putting on a not guilty defense. His or her only actions involve getting the best possible sentence for the culprit.
An attorney for a defendant has an ethical duty to present the best possible defense, which may mean playing the race card, as happened int he OJ case, or the SODDI* defense, which was in essence the defense used by Terry Nichols to escape the death penalty. It's the way our system works, and it certainly beats systems in other countries where a person may be convicted and executed without even having an attorney (Afghanistan comes immediately to mind.)
TEd
*Some Other Dude Did It
TEd
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Dear Max: the crazy verdicts represent the idiocy of the juries, who are all to ready to give away somebody else's money. Many times lawyers advise their clients to settle out of court just to avoid getting an absurd jury verdict. Too many idiots get onto juries.Too many good citizens manage to avoid jury duty.
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>crazy verdicts while the fact of the matter is that there will always be excesses when it comes to jury verdicts (it's a crapshoot), the average award derived from litigation has come down dramatically in recent years. this is, in no small way, a reaction to grossly obscene awards in previous years (see, for example, the McDonalds scalding coffee lawsuit*, a real and well-documented case (as opposed to those cited above)). the pendulum has swung far enough the other way so as to make it difficult to get any kind of meaningful recompense for real damages suffered at the hands of careless or wantonly negligent individuals or businesses. not that this has put a stop to the never-ending desire on the part of the faineant to get something for nothing, and keep the barratrous (but still at the bar) ambulance chasers well-employed. it's that crapshoot mentality. I think I'll go out and purchase some lottery tickets now. * http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
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veteran
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I was interested to see your definition of barratry, which I had not encountered before. I had encountered the word, being in the shipping business, because every ocean bill of lading, which constitutes the contract of carriage, stipulates that the ship and/or its owners or operators shall not be liable for any loss arising from the barratry of the master or crew. In this sense, it means a fraudulent, neglectful or wrong action by the master or a crew member. On looking in a couple dictionaries, I found your definition, mine (noted as archaic by one dictionary, which it certainly is not, being in use daily in the ocean shipping business), and a third, which is the offense generally known as simony -- trafficking in church benefices or offices.
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