Terrorist Intimidation: Witnesses, Jurors Protection Overlooked in NYC Terrorist Trial
November 20, 2009
November 20, 2009
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“Trial Lawyers,” 111th Congress and Next Presidency - A Possible Onslaught for “Justice”
Guest Column | By Marion Edwyn Harrison, ESQ. | November 12, 2008
On February 08, 2007, column reprinted following, this commentary, amid toying with philology, discussed the risk of promotion by the incoming 110th Congress of reckless contingency-fee litigation and the restraining force of President George W. Bush. It may come to pass in the ensuing Presidency and the 111th Congress that the risk is so pervasive “we ain’t seen nothing” yet.
Except for the major-media WALL STREET JOURNAL and the specialized BLOOMBERG NEWS, possibly a few others, the media has accorded little attention to what has been, and is, brewing within some States, now nationally.
Two of the States in which plaintiffs’ contingency-fee lawyers, the so-called “Trial Bar,” flourished, Mississippi and Texas, changed their law more evenly to balance the litigating forum. New Jersey and New Mexico went somewhat the other way. Colorado went more wild, increasing limitations upon what euphemistically some people term “noneconomic” damages - in other words, punitive damages. Maryland and Oregon stretched out statutes of limitations, thus allowing more years after an alleged tort was committed to file litigation. Colorado, Illinois, Texas and Washington considered other pro-plaintiff proposals.
So much for the States. However, in the aggregate, litigation in State courts looms larger than in Federal courts because the overwhelming preponderance of tort lawsuits is there.
How about the Feds? We must speculate. We must do so in the context of the worldwide economic jolt, recession or depression, whichever it turns out to be; the unimaginable excess of national debt and of Congressional earmarks; problems with warfare and final American disposition in Afghanistan and Iraq; and unpredictable terrorist risks. In other words, except to that powerful lobby consisting of the American Association for Justice - such accuracy and objectivity of that name! - and the gigantic and affluent “Trial Bar,” there isn’t much focus on this subject.
But that specialized focus is for real. The proponents of facile and essentially unlimited tort litigation donated - aye, invested - about $ 183 million in the 2004 Quadrennial Elections and may have hit $ 200 million this year, 75% or so to Democratic candidacies. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL even printed an editorial entitled “Biden of Asbestos,” summarizing the Vice President-elect’s and his son’s support for major tort litigation in Delaware. A senior, and probably very competent, Obama advisor performed some paid work for the American Association for Justice. Two examples, of course, in and of themselves don’t prove much but those who follow the activities of this aggressive and influential segment of the American Bar are well aware of the sweeping, and generally expertly orchestrated, effort to influence the Presidency and Congress. Preservation of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, a product of the 109th Congress and the Bush Administration, will be only a portion of the defense effort.
Only in America are defendants penalized to the tune of millions or more dollars by runaway juries and frequently constrained judges in a civil, not criminal, trial. So much for the functional equivalent of “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” Although the trial is not criminal, there is no guilty finding and the looser “preponderance of the evidence” rather than “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” test applies.
In the interest of disclosure, I mention that in many years of organized-bar activity, including ten years in the American Bar Association House of Delegates and four on its Board of Governors and other positions in that and other formal bar organizations, I consistently opposed the excesses of the “Trial Lawyers.”
What’s In A Name? - “Trial Lawyers” Alone for Justice?
By Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq.
February 08, 2007
Perhaps it is true, with apologies to the Immortal Bard, to whom the line is attributed: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet . . .” If so, the message at times may be ripe for antonymic application.
Judging by the language of commercial advertising and “politics-speak” over many years, it is clear that a name or slogan as originally formulated sometimes attracts unwanted repute. The almost invariable reaction: Change the name or slogan.
Thus, the salubrious sound of “free trade” began as “resale price maintenance.” “Inheritance taxes” to those who oppose them became “death taxes.” Uniquely and tragically, “abortion” became, at least to its proponents, “pro-choice.” The wordsmith granddaddy of them all may be “life insurance” which, to be sure, neither assures nor ensures a life but pays a benefit to somebody other than the deceased when the insured dies.
So much for amateur philology. The latest verbal recreation is that of the gigantic and, unfortunately highly successful, lobby for, and association of, so-called “trial lawyers” - that is, the contingency-fee bar which has wreaked such havoc upon business, hospitals, physicians and other victims, increasing costs to huge numbers of citizens as unnamed victims and reducing income to business, hospitals, physicians and others as named victims.
The semantic evolution in the quest for respectability reveals a good bit:
1947 National Association of Claimants’ Compensation Attorneys
1960 National Association of Claimants’ Counsel of America
1964 American Trial Lawyers Association
1972 Association of Trial Lawyers of America
2006 American Association for Justice
Wow! How masterful! Businesses, hospitals, physicians and other litigation victims, as well as their attorneys, are all in favor of injustice!
Whatever its altruistic and beguiling name, the American Association for Justice (“AAJ”) is big-time. In 2005 alone AAJ spent some $ 7.2 million. That is considerably less than business interests spent but AAJ’s expenditures are more single-purpose: juries generous with other people’s money, big awards, commensurately large plaintiffs’ attorneys (almost entirely contingent) fees.
Free Congress Foundation from time to time has addressed, and continues to address, this overall subject, including its forum on April 10, 2004, in the Senate Dirksen Office Building, keynoted by Kentucky’s Senator A. Mitchell (Mitch) McConnell, Jr., now Senate Minority Leader. President George W. Bush also has attempted to infuse some reasonableness and fairness into the system, including his support for, and signing of, the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, in February 2005.
The bulk of the problem, of course, lies in the States and their courts. However, one must be alert as to what, if anything, the newly organized 110th Congress may attempt. However beguiling the name of the organization, the AAJ, similar organizations in the States and great numbers of affluent and politically hep plaintiffs’ contingency-fee lawyers know how to organize and how to politick. (Maybe Presidential candidate John Edwards, having amassed tens of millions of dollars in such fees, is an exemplar.)
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel for, the Free Congress Foundation.
This column is the property of the Free Congress Foundation and may not be reproduced without their permission. For comments and inquiries, contact Phyllis E. Hughes at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Visit our website at www.FreeCongress.org
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
1 Comment | Post a Comment
November 13 at 1:14 pm | #1 | Link
Arbitration may be the answer. Lawsuits often seem to be no more than a form of lottery, in which many people who have been genuinely hurt or damaged may or may not get compensated, and even then have to share a sizable (often obscene) portion of their award to the lawyers. A former governor of California in attacking tort reform stated to the effect that whenever someone in California has a fender bender, he thinks he has won the lottery. People like Edwards might not get super rich in a system of arbitration, but there would certainly be a place for lawyers to ensure that people’s complaints are treated fairly. If I had a complaint of the sort which are the basis of today’s lawsuits, I would be foolish not to employ somebody who knows the ropes to see that I my complaint was accorded the proper procedure and arbitration. The total amounts paid out through arbitration might even be equal to those paid out in today’s wild system of haphazard suits, but there would be an element of fairness and real compensation to those really entitled to damages—not just to those with talented, often unprincipled lawyers. Class action suits have become the prime racket of today’s lawyers, often outright instruments of blackmail and often, while enriching the lawyers, paying the punniest of payouts to plaintiffs. I am not against the tort principle—people have to be held accountable for their actions, and I certainly would not want to live in a society without lawyers (although Shakespere’s admonition, “First we’ll shoot the lawyers” has always had some instinctive appeal to me given the gross misbehavior of lawyers like Edwards!) The racketerring (strong word, but I believe all too often applicable to trial lawyers) is not limited to trial lawyers and their paid advocates. I have a sneaking suspicion that the insurance companies, which complain so vocerifously, might be against arbitration as it would lessen the outrageous policy premiums which they justify today by the unpredictably of payouts through suits. So reform would challenge lawyers, insurance companies and the Congressmen and state legislatures which are now the recipients of lawyer largesse, making any reform possible by degrees at best. I offer the above as food for thought, or as a topic for brainstorming, as it is really too complicated for any easy, pat solution.
CTR
PS. One last point: I have always wondered that lawyers in the legislatures aren’t required to automically disqualify themselves when voting on issure like tort reform which affect them. directly.