Why people hate plaintiff’s lawyers
You know I used to be a plaintiff’s lawyer. I used to wonder, why are lawyers the brunt of so many jokes and the object of so much derision?
I mean I’m a nice guy and most of my plaintiff’s lawyer brethren in the small Southern town I practiced in were nice guys too. Sure sometimes I wondered whether or not my client really hurt as bad as he said he did, but lawyers don’t make those judgments, juries do. Even though it was unpopular I felt like it was honorable work.
Since I have left that profession and moved over to the entrepreneurial ranks, I have come to better understand the angst so many feel against lawyers. I’ve seen bogus lawsuit after bogus lawsuit come down the pipe filed by agitators looking to collect millions of dollars without sustaining any real injury or damage. However, what I learned reading the news today has taken the cake for legal malfeasance.
Little League Baseball has settled a 2004 lawsuit brought by the parent of a 12 year old boy in Staten Island, NY who injured his knee sliding into second base during a game for 125,000 bucks! Among the things the lawsuit alleged was that the coaching staff was negligent in not teaching her son how to slide properly and that the local league was using bases that were not safe (although they were on the list of approved equipment).
Evidently the suit went on for 5 years prior to settlement. I shudder to think of the money that Little League had spent in defense of the case over that time. Evidently, given the crazy behavior of juries these days, Little League felt like it was better to write a check and move on than to go through the expense of a multi-day trial.
After reading the report, I just sat still for several minutes wondering what in the world was this mother thinking. Little League is a non-profit organization. Little League coaches are unpaid volunteers. You play baseball with hard balls and metal bats. There is inherent danger in baseball as there is with any sporting activity. You’d think that “Mom” might have figured this out when she noticed that they sent her son up to bat wearing a helmet….
But I don’t blame “Mom” as much as I blame the blood sucking, ambulance chasing, lawyer who brought the case. Moms have a natural instinct to protect their children and to go after anything that they sense is trying to harm them. God made them that way and more often than not, that’s a good thing. The lawyer was only in it for the money.
If that mother had walked into my office and explained her situation, I would have expressed sympathy and wished her son good luck in rehab. And I’d bet you that response would have been exactly the same in 99% of the law offices of this country. However, all you need is one lawyer totally devoid of any scruples whatsoever to ruin the reputation of the whole bunch.
The truth is that if anyone was responsible for this kid’s injury it’s the mother herself. Anybody who registers a 12 year old boy to play baseball that hasn’t already figured out how to slide on his own is patently negligent as a parent. Seriously, if I had asked my Dad how to slide when I was 12, he might literally have died of shame right there on the spot.
But I digress…this misguided lawsuit never would have happened without a slimy lawyer. What kind of snake brings a case like this against an organization like Little League? Baseball is the National Pastime for crying out loud!
He’s a disgrace to the Bar. He’s a disgrace to humanity.
And thanks to this slime ball, I’ll never again wonder why Shakespeare famously wrote in Henry VI, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”
Apparently Brian, not only do you have some more wondering to do, you have some reading to do as well. I love how you quote Shakespeare yet, I'll bet you a Ben Franklin you've never read a single chapter of any of his works.
ReplyDeleteSo while you rant on about things of which you are so clearly uninformed, let me enlighten you a bit.
The phrase you so brazenly take out of context is actually spoken by Dick the Butcher, a follower of anarchist Jack Cade, whom Shakespeare depicts as "the head of an army of rabble and a demagogue pandering to the ignorant," who sought to overthrow the government. Shakespeare's acknowledgment that the first thing any potential tyrant must do to eliminate freedom is to "kill all the lawyers".
So, either you support tyranny over the citizenry and the elimination of freedom or you are just too plain stupid to realize a phrase you use as an insult is actually one of the greatest compliments you could bestow upon a lawyer.
Am I surprised? No. Most people who blindly believe whatever Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others like them tell them to beleive don't have enough brain power to understand that life is a lot more complicated than simple sound bytes like "jackpot justice" or "millions for frivolous lawsuits."
Let me ask you two questions: First, name me one REAL lawsuit where someone, as you so eloquently stated, "collected millions of dollars without sustaining any real injury or damage." A "FWD:" of some phony e-mail won't suffice, show me a caption and/or case cite.
Second, I don't know much about the facts of your little league story so unlike you I won't make commentary about things of which I am completely uninformed. So, my question is this: Assuming it was frivolous for this "scumbag lawyer" to file this case, why didn't the little league simply present these "frivolous facts" to a jury? How come those 12 people wouldn't agree with you and send this clown home with a big fat zero defense verdict and then move for costs for bringing a frivolous claim?
I always find it curious how you "very conservative" people think that juries exhibit the wisdom of Solomon when deciding to put someone death for an alleged crime, yet these same 12 people miraculously turn into blithering fools when asked to evaluate a "frivolous civil lawsuit."
So uninformed, so hypocritical....so typical!!!
First, send me a c note because I can assure you I've read more than one of Shakespeare's complete works. Admittedly, it's been a while, but I've read Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet in their entirety.
ReplyDeleteSecond, you do understand that I'm a lawyer too right?
Third, surely you understand that trying cases is extremely expensive. Perhaps the Little League made an economic decision. It is extremely difficult to recover Rule 11 sanctions against an individual litigant.
Fourth, why do you assume that you know what I believe about the death penalty? I have made no mention of it here.
You obviously missed the part above where I suggested that 99% of lawyers probably wouldn't have taken the case. This note was hardly then an attack on all lawyers. It was an example of how a terribly misguided suit such as this causes people to hate lawyers. Whether we like it or not, it is a demonstrable fact that lawyers don't exactly have the highest approval ratings.
Finally, you misquote me in your question. I said I'm aware of instances where millions have been sought where no actual damages have occurred. I have been involved in the defense of five such cases in the past three years. Two of them ended in summary judgment for the Defendant, but with hundreds of thousands of dollars in defense costs. One was just argued before the 9th Circuit Ct. of Appeals (after a 12(b)6 ruling in defendant's favor. Two others are still pending. I will not name the captions in these cases as it would be improper to disclose my attorney client relationships without consent of the client, but believe me I'm not speaking about something I read in an email forward. I'm speaking from my personal experience.
Thanks for your spirited response.