What Lawyers Do

This is the advertisement by the Chamber of Commerce that I made reference to in a recent post. Hmm… after further reflection, I think the word propaganda better describes it than does advertisement.

The piece obviously seeks to have a psychological effect on viewers seeing that it plays gripping music while a voiceover claims that lawsuits turn dreams into nightmares. Notice that it does not cite any statistics or human examples to support its claim.

How about an ad on behalf of persons injured due to defective products and negligent corporations? That ad could also have gripping music and could also state that an injured (or deceased) person’s dreams became a nightmare. It could show that injured person unable to walk or unable to see, or as a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair, or missing a limb, or as someone with permanently disfiguring scars. This describes the clients that come to my office; I didn’t see anyone who fits that description in the Chamber’s “ad.”

I suggest that rather than using heated terms like lawsuit abuse, and rather than making claims without supporting evidence (a common one is that doctors are leaving certain states in droves) simply to stir up the passions and prejudices of the general public, we have an honest discussion about what should be the role of the legal system in our society. Put simply, do we want injured people to be able to obtain compensation from negligent defendants, or would we prefer to live in a nation where these tortfeasors do not have any responsibility to the persons they injured?

If we choose the latter, what effect would that have on safety for individuals in our society in the workplace, as patients in hospitals, as well as simply crossing the street? And how would injured persons and the spouses and children of those wrongfully killed by the negligence of another survive without any compensation for their loss of income? Is this the type of society we want to live in?

On the other side of the equation, the only entities usually “harmed” when a plaintiff wins a personal injury lawsuit are insurance companies. And if you think they are victims in our society, then this post ain’t gonna get through to you, not now, not ever, and so I may as well just stop right here ….