Attorneys: A Joke?

Having worked both sides of the fence as a police officer and then a lawyer, I often found myself as the butt of many jokes at family and social gatherings. Having a thick skin and armed with jokes of my own, I survived. I rationalized that most people couldn't walk in the shoes of a cop. They wouldn't walk the streets and alleys that cops do during the day much less the dark of night. They wouldn't do it for a million dollars and certainly not for the much less that we were actually paid. So the donut jokes were funny and like rubber tipped toy arrows, they never pierced my skin.

But lawyer jokes were different because the sarcastic humor directed at lawyers were more often deserved than not. I'm not down on all lawyers for they are like apples: both good and bad. They ensure that even the most vile individual receives representation in a court of law. They work endlessly to right the wrongs inflicted by the judicial system. They provide their services for free or at a reduced rate to assist individuals challenged by their societal status. Eventually these lawyers are placed in a strangle hold by the system. Smaller firms grappling with larger firms soon find themselves inundated with requests to produce documents and other forms of evidence so miniscule and so irrelevant that the smaller firm finds it fiscally impossible to continue without buckling under to a quick and less than responsible settlement. A less than scrupulous lawyer will fire off a string of frivilous motions designed to wear the opposition down.

The system measures success on the trappings and furnishing of an office and the wealth accumulated by an attorney; not always the track record. Of course the two could be directly proportional, but that is not always the case. Some very good attorneys, don't make a lot of money because they constantly fight windmills or in other words - no money cases. Some bad attorneys collect large fees, but actually are apathetic to the case at hand. They just go through the motions.

Large judgments handed down by sympathetic juries and the astronomical fees collected by the attorneys are often the basis for the contempt fired at attorneys. Groups lobby the federal and state governments to place limits on the amount a victim of medical malpractice or product liability can receive in judgment of a case. I don't think that an attorney should be faulted because a jury decided that it was proved that a doctor or a company negligently caused injury. I don't think that an attorney should be the object contempt for collecting a large fee in these cases for he/she did their job. What I do find as contemptible is the "frivolous" lawsuit, one filed without merit. But the rules of most courts allow for these lawsuits on the premise that there just might be something there or if not maybe this is a well placed belief in the extension of existing law.

Here are a few examples to think about. The recent tsunami disaster will undoubtly result in a variety of lawsuits not unlike the one now being bantered around. A group of Austrian and German citizens are contemplating the novel approach of suing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for failing to properly predict the earthquake and the resultant tsunami and thereby failing to warn of the disaster and as such responsible for death, injury and property damage. A boy alleged to have killed two police officers and a dispatcher after his arrest for stealing an auto has placed the blame on the manufacturer of a popular video game and is suing the manufacturer and the stores that sold him the video. This is incredulous and ludicrous


Attorneys filing a civil lawsuit attempt to find a venue that will be favorable to them. Venue is determined by the location where the lawsuit is being brought having some connection with the defendant in the case. There is a supposed sense of fairness in doing this so that the defendant is not facing a trial in a hostile arena. However, some venues are pro plaintiff no matter what. So if for say you are suing a railroad, an attorney will look for a venue where the train has tracks. The tracks are there and so then the defendant does business there even though the incident related to the lawsuit may have occurred a thousand miles away. One might say that all is fair in love, war,or lawsuits, but it really isn't fair when the judges in this venue have a certain relationship with these attorneys and the same attorneys keeping appearing before the same court with the same type of case only a different cast.

A class action lawsuit involves a lawsuit being brought normally against a business which has supposedly wronged a great number of individuals, more so than can fit into a courtroom, and either one or two plaintiffs are named to represent the whole class of individuals who have been injured. They usually end in a settlement where the business claims no wrong doing, but that a settlement of the issues would benefit all involved. So you might receive a coupon for $5 off on your next tire purchase, a month of free phone cell use(limits apply) or just an apology so to speak for the behavior of the defendant. Attorneys fees frequently exceed $1.5 million. Who wins?

Like I said, there are good and bad. Don't think of all when you read or see news reports of silly antics in the courtroom. Some make their living on the publicity and relish the exposure. But some make their living by giving something back to the community because they believe they have a debt to pay for becoming an officer of the court.