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| black helicopters | | Date Created: Dec 04, 2005, 09:23 PM |
The following is an email exchange with an honest and hardworking attorney and personal friend:
All I can say is that your notion that somehow plaintiff lawyers have
"government" and "the court system" behind them is akin to thinking the
Trilateral Commission has a lot of black helicopters somewhere out in
Montana.
I hate to belabor this but based on the above, it appears I either didn't get my point across or [name withheld] esq. failed his civics and Law 101.
This is actually a fundamental issue. Too many US citizens, particularly liberals, think that the government is just another big corporation that makes lots of money. They also think that corporations are evil and greedy and do nothing but pollute, force people to work for little or nothing, and drain the economy with their capitalistic practices which are bordering on being a monopoly or illegal and certainly unethical. Big Tobacco comes to mind. This is why I continually refer to Big Government and we should refer to big, wealthy, and powerful corporations with names like Dewey Cheatum & Howe as Big Law.
Let's review. The government makes nothing except, perhaps, printing money. It produces nothing. It only takes money from people who produce it and redistributes it to whomever it feels is deserving, a political decision. No business could run like this. Citizens and businesses ("corporations") are what the country is made of and the only source of increasing wealth. Government takes from wealth produced by its citizens and gives it back for services or gives it away. This is why taxes and government regulation are a drag on the economy and government spending cannot "stimulate the economy" because it first had to be taken away (and largely wasted). Reducing taxes and regulatory burden is the only way to stimulate the economy. This is one of the few things Bush has gotten right.
Now what is the government? It's the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches whether state or federal. The courts are part of the judicial branch. Courts were set up to resolve disputes (and punish people who break the law) so that we don't have vigilante justice and settling disputes violently in the streets. How do the courts do this? Because they have the power of government behind it. And what is that power? The power of guns and incarceration. Other branches of government have the power of taxation (and recently enhanced power to take away your property and give it to someone else who might make more money for the government with it.)
The point is that a corporation, no matter how big or monopolistic, has no power over you and no power to make you do anything. They must be successful by providing something you want and are willing to pay an agreed upon amount for. Contract law used to be big back in the days of The Paper Chase because most disputes involved contracts. Tort disputes, of course, are when someone feels they have been harmed but there was no prior contract. If this cannot be settled amicably, then the courts are there to settle the dispute WITH THE FORCE OF GOVERNMENT behind it. You can be fined, thrown in jail, or have your liberty or property otherwise taken for failing to do what the government decides. This is as simple as failing to obey a building code or ignoring a subpoena.
Lawyers are agents of the court. A plaintiff attorney can file a lawsuit against you on the purest whim and the court will take it seriously and potentially ruin your life. I realize there are safeguards against this but part of the problem with the changes made in tort litigation is that the safeguards don't work, new areas have been created to litigate over, and there is a financial incentive to bring the suits and very little downside other than expense to prevent it. Would you want to give Exxon this kind of power?
Now what person or business out there has that kind of power over you? I can't think of any. The power of the plaintiff attorneys is the power of the courts which is the power of government which is the power to take from you or restrict your liberty. It doesn't need black helicopters. I know this because I've been sued. [name witheld] knows it because he's gone on record as saying he would have lost his kids if he weren't a lawyer. If you, [name withheld], have been sued, I guarantee you it doesn't have the same effect as when I got sued. You would feel the power of the government or the court system if you were just a shlub out there like a doctor who went through ten years of training after college to be a part of the medical profession. Of course most people aren't doctors. And most people don't get sued for malpractice or tort liability. Why? Because they don't have money to go after. It's all about the money, but when it goes through the power of the courts, it acts like legal extortion.
And BTW, this should not be taken to mean that law isn't a legitimate profession and that there are not honest lawyers doing necessary legal work. It's creating legal work in order to make money using the power of the courts that's the problem. It would be similar if doctors could create disease in order to treat it and make lots of money doing it by forcing you to pay for it. |
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