How Low Will The Lawyers Go?

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Wardad:
Q: Who is responsible... Golfer, Golf Course, or County?

A golfer hits a ball over a high fence and it hits a car and that car causes an accident.

I'll tell you who I think, although I seriously doubt the courts would agree. I say the golfer. And I am a golfer myself. As a golfer I think you are responsible to being aware of your limitations.

Many will say an errant shot is a "fluke" and we shouldn't hold the golfer responsible. But I don't agree it's a fluke. If you don't have a reasonable expectation of hitting the ball towards the hole, you should not be taking the risk of cutting too close to the corner or along the edge of the property. Golfers are all perfectly aware of the principle of risk and reward, but we tend to limit our thinking to the "risk" of adding to our score. We don't think about the real risk of damage to others personal property.

If your game isn't up to the level of playing those high risk shots, you play it safe. You aim down the other side of the fairway, you take less club, you don't try to swing out of your own shoes. You decrease the chance of hurting someone, and in all likelyhood you will lower your score to boot. Of course you you eliminate the possibilty of hitting those towering drives that bend over the treeline and land four inches form the cup. But wake up dude, if you could hit shots like that you wouldn't be playing the back 9 at your local muni at 4:45 anyway.

If the course you are playing puts you in too many of these dangerous situiations, you need to find a course with more open space. One that is better suited to your ability level.

And get some lessons.

If someone goes to a firing range and doesn't know what the heck they are doing and starts shooting off in totally different directions then the targets, I think we would all agree they bear the responsibility if some poor shmuck gets hit by an "errant" bullet while sitting on his back porch.

[Growltigger]

Hmmm, as what may be the resident lawyer on this page, I feel I must defend my profession and have the following observations:

1 I do not think the correct phrase is "pro bono". Pro bono means working for free, where you do not expect to be paid. I do pro bono work for certain charities, where I give them a certain amount of advise per year free. There is no payment.

The word you are looking for is "contingent". American attorneys can work on a contingent fee basis ie no win, no fee. Most other jurisdictions contain strong prohibitions or restrictions on accepting contingent fees. We can in England, but the extent and fee uplift are regulated.

2 Please keep you comments restricted to American attorneys. After all, the US has 90% of the world's lawyers, and also has the legal regime which allows the sort of spurious claims against which you are protesting.

Unfortunately, American lawyers give the rest of us a bad name, and I for one am stick of being lumped with them.

3 Also, you need to exclude most commercial lawyers from your statement. In fact, limit your statement to "American litigators" and you are nearer where you want to be.

Corporate lawyers (such as myself) do not deal in transactions that can lead to class suite or frivolous/vexatious claims. We deal in business matters, and save in Enron style cases of fraud, the majority of what we do will not get to court, will not have settlements, and basically is down to sorting out contracts.

American Litigators can, and they do.

4 If you have a problem, lobby your congressmen and CHANGE YOUR LEGAL SYSTEM. The US legal system has become what it is because of what is perceived to be the causation of jurisprudence flowing from the US constitution, and certain landmark "freewill" cases. It is now an inalieable right of free speech in the US for anyone to sue anybody for anything.

This has serious knock on effects. For example, the cost of your healthcare is dramatically increased, because every time you go to hospital with a minor ailment, you have to be tested for pretty much every possible permutation of disease on the planet, because if on the offchance you actually have got the million to one shot case of Growltigga's dribbling bottom virus, and the hospital hasnt picked it up, hey ho, you can sue them for millions and millions of dollars (as if millions and millions of dollars is reasonable compensation) because lordy, they didnt test for absolutely bloody everything - end result? insurance goes up, healthcare goes up - you disclude the defence of reasonable causation which is the bloody fundamental basis of pretty much every other legal system in the world, other than US!

Also explains why the coda franca of the world is English law, rather than any Federal law. New York law is used on quite a few transactions, but its commercial code is rather similar to English law.

The biggest change you should make to your legal system is juries, and having a reality check on the level of damages your juries can award in court.

By way of comparison, here in the UK, a hospital was sued for causing brain damage to a patient. The patient was awarded £2million. This was compared with similar cases in the US and France. In France, the award was £1.8, in the US, $75 million??

You will have lawyers pursuing such cases where they have even the slimmest chance of a slice of such an astomical payout. LAw is a business, just like any other.

5 Finally, Atrocities and other posters, I am always happy to see any form of comment, but may be you should think harder about who or what you are insulting before you make blanket statements. I am a lawyer, I dont like people making sideswipes based on what a bunch of unregulated tosspots in a different jurisdiction are doing. If you want to slate them, keep it to American lawyers, and dont try and bring the rest of the world into the insult.

Also, next time you have an accident at work, or are hit by a car, or are getting divorced, or are assaulted in the street, who on earth do you think will be the person you turn to to sort out your problems?

Apologies for the rambling, but I need to type this quickly before I go off and throw another single mother out on the street for not paying her TV licence!

[ January 28, 2004, 14:14: Message edited by: Growltigger ]

[gregebowman]

My apologies. Of course I was referring to American ambulance chasers, not English solicitors who throw single moms out on the street. What's a tv license, btw?

[geoschmo]

Well Gt, I think specifically mentioning in all our Posts that we are refering to American Lawyers is quite redundant and uneccesary. Assuming that you are correct, as you usually are, that 90% of the worlds lawyers are of the American variety; practically all the objectionable offenses commited by lawyers are done so my American Lawyers, which appears to be your assumption; assuming that the majority of the posters on this forum are American, a fact not much in dispute I believe, and that the majority of Americans, and consequently a majority of the American posters on this forum, are basically uneducated about life and circumstances outside of our own country, another fact I highly doubt you will dispute, I think that one can reasonably assume, since you profess to admire the principle of reasonableness, that any negative comments made by posters on this forum are in regards to American Lawyers, unless otherwise specifically noted.

Geo

[ January 28, 2004, 14:33: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by Thermodyne:

quote:

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Originally posted by General Woundwort:
EDIT - Oh, and BTW... go ahead and tax cigarettes all you want - but lay off my cigars!!!

What about your cars and personal property?

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I've consistently voted against the car/personal property tax in Virginia. If the politicos can't live within the income taxes I already pay to them, that's their problem.

[ January 28, 2004, 14:44: Message edited by: General Woundwort ]

[Growltigger]

Well Geo old chap, I am slightly incorrect in my statement that 90% of the world's lawyers are American. In fact, I believe the figure is closer to 92%.

I would not have the temerity to say that practically all of the objectionable offences commited by lawyers are done so by American lawyers, as that would be arrogance, and would not take into account that the other legal systems of the World do have their own right royal cock-ups. Human rights cases in quite a lot of the Eastern hemisphere spring to mind.

That being said, the matters being complained of here, eg sueing the fast food industry for making people fat, sueing the video game industry for causing people to be violent (a nice one in a country that let's people freely have automatic and assualt weaponry!!), are particular to the US legal system.

But, this is not a pure American forum. So any generic statement that lawyers are the scum of the earth and the lowest of the low, by its very necessity is a remark which equally applies to lawyers from all the other countries represented here on the forum, England, Germany, Australia etc., and that is what I dislike.

I am fed up with being tarred with the same brush which is applied to what I can only describe as misconceived spurious money grabbing claims brought by profiteering types which unfortunately, make regular headlines in the US.

Let's look at what the majority of lawyers throughout the world do. You can split them into two generic types, corporate lawyers and private lawyers. This is further split into contentious and non-contentious work.

Non contentious Corporate lawyers deal with companies, whether it be employment, pensions, corporate, mergers and acquisition advice or whatever. We deal with corporates, we act for corporates in doing things that corporates do. I am not aware of too many headline cases where non contentious corporate lawyers have shocked the world with the daftness of what they are doing.

Non contentious private lawyers deal with people. When you buy your house, when you get divorced, when you want to make a will etc basically, when you have problems, you turn to these people to help you. Keep in mind that for most people, they only deal with lawyers when there are problems in their lives, so it is fair to say (and I accept) that we get tarnished with being only around when the fecal matter hits the rotary air impeller.

Now, we turn to contentious lawyers. These are the litigators, which make up a sizable chunk of the American legal fraternity (I believe more as a percentage than other jurisdictions). These are your contingent fee chappies, these are the people who sue McDonalds cos their food makes you fat, these are the people who sue hospitals cos they didnt test you for Growltigga's dribbling backside syndrome.

Contentious lawyers are everywhere, but the cases which make the headlines are those in the US. And this is not because the US has more legal cases per capita than anywhere else, it doesnt. They make the headlines for 2 reasons - (1) the US legal system allows claims like this, which pretty much any other jurisdiction would chuck out for abuse of process and (2) the jury based system of damages means the awards granted in US courts are, by comparison with the rest of the world, absolutely unbeleivable (I remember one case where a neighbour reversed his car over the foot of his neighbour, and broke two of his toes - that neighbour was awarded $950,000 in damages - where the hell is the justification in that, how do you prove that injury is worth that amount?)

I resent being associated with that.

Fine, in your opinion I may be being unduly sensitive, but I dont think so. Perhaps Atrocites should have entitled this thread "How low will lawyers in the US go" - that would be more accurate.

The same would apply if I started a post saying "are all people employed in IT a bunch of dreming overpaid tosspots?" - I would be insulting everybody in the industry, and not just the people say on the help desk at Microsoft who I really meant. A defence of saying "Hey, we are mainly Americans so therefore we only mean America is a bit egocentrical" in my opinion, unless this thread is only meant to be for Americans and the rest of us dont have an invite.

I do beleive in reasonableness, and yes, it can strongly be argued that since Atrocities is a US citizen, he is only talking about US lawyers, but it is dangerous to leverage generic statements such as "lawyers are scumbags" on the back of that interpretation.

Finally, I wouldn't dream comment on whether or not the majority of Americans are basically uneducated about life and circumstances out the US. I haven't really met enough to know whether this is a fair statement or not. Some certainly are, but then so are a lot of British who wont go abroad because of the greasy food, funny people and heathen language. I do not think America has a monopoly on introverted types.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Growltigger:
A defence of saying "Hey, we are mainly Americans so therefore we only mean America is a bit egocentrical" in my opinion, unless this thread is only meant to be for Americans and the rest of us dont have an invite.

On the contrary, I would never hold such an uncooth and jingoistic opinion. One of the values of this forum is that it exposes us to varying opinons and cultures. I totally respect all the differing points of view here and invite all to participate. I am merely of the opinon that trying to be overly careful about every single word doesn't really help the flow of ideas all that much. Perhaps in areas where it is reasonable that someone could misunderstand. But since he specifically mentioned the cases he takes offense at, i.e. the recent slew of big ticket product liability class action lawsuits, I don't think your case for taking offense is all that strong. I don't think a reasonable person would think Atrocities is in any way besmirtching the reputation of your esteemed collegue in Bangladesh drawing up real estate contracts. He's doing a bang up job, we are all sure.

Besides, "How low will the contentious private US lawyers go?" as a thread topic may be more precise and a tad less offensive, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tounge, wot?