Scaling Back Justice?

Lawyer Objects to "Over-Lawyering," But Critics Say His Proposed "Health Courts" Would Nullify Our Rights

(CBS)  A Delaware school board granted a reprieve this past week to six-year-old Zachary Christie, who was punished for bringing a Cub Scout camping utensil to school in alleged violation of the school's zero-tolerance no-weapons policy. For critics, that case is just another example of zero brains and lawyer creep. Our Cover Story is reported now by Jeff Greenfield:

---

In the nation's capital, where laws are made . . . in the very Congress itself where nearly half the members are men and women of the law . . .

. . . a lawyer has come with a message about the law: We need, he says, a lot LESS of it.

"It's very concrete," said Philip Howard. "On the broadest level, we need a fundamental shift in the way we approach law to restore the freedom of people to actually do their jobs."

It is, says Howard, nothing less than a matter of national survival.

"We're at a unique time in our history right now. The country is an economic crisis. The institutions of our society are dead in the water. People have been reforming schools for decades and they just get worse. People keep trying to fix healthcare and it gets more and more expensive. It doesn't deliver better care. So something has to change."

Howard may seem like the unlikeliest of messengers: he's a lawyer with Covington and Burling, a powerhouse international law firm that represents some of the biggest corporations, and nations, in the world.

So why would such a figure publish a book whose title promises "Life Without Lawyers"?

"What we have is a system of justice that allows anyone to bring claims, whether it's reasonable or not, and to press it down to any disappointment, like, for example, a child's grade in a classroom," said Howard.

"Let's start with the title of your book," said Greenfield: "You're not adopting the 'First thing, let's kill all the lawyers' deal, are you?"

"No. It's about getting rid of law in people's daily lives," he said. "Teachers feel that they can't maintain order in the classroom, and doctors go through the day seeing every patient as a potential plaintiff. Camp counselors won't put an arm around the crying child. It's this idea that anything that goes wrong can be a lawsuit, and no one's drawing a boundary about what's a valid lawsuit and what's not."

A "New Yorker" cartoon this past summer neatly captures Howard's message: Says the child, "My Mom says you can sleep in the top bunk if your parents sign a release form."

Congressman Jim Cooper, a Democrat from Tennessee, is one of those legislators who likes what Philip Howard says about the law.

He offered his own take on our "over-lawed" system: "I think we have a surplus of lawyers. We have a shortage of engineers and scientists and teachers and folks who arguably do more good for society."

Howard's argument is no academic exercise. The law, he says, puts its heavy hand on us from our days as children.

"When I was a kid growing up in the streets and the playgrounds of New York the ground was fairly hard and we had monkey bars," recalled Greenfield. "Jungle gyms, I guess we called them. Is that the sort of thing that the law has affected?"

"Playgrounds have been transformed," Howard said. "There is literally nothing in a playground in America for a child over the age of four. There are no jungle gyms. There are no seesaws. There are no climbing ropes. There are no high slides. It's very important for children to learn to understand their own limits, to take care of themselves."

"Would it be fair to say that lawyers have as much to do with modern playground design as designers do?" Greenfield asked.

"I think it's kind of a balance," said Adrian Benepe.

Benepe worked in the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation since the age of 18. Today he's the Commissioner.

"Well, it's really a few safety reasons," said Benepe. "People felt that the playgrounds were dangerous. You could fall. You could break a leg. You could get a concussion. You could get a spinal injury on the seesaws. And probably, after a lot of lawsuits, the standards changed."

And if too much law is making playgrounds less playful, says Howard, it is making our schools downright chaotic, by stripping teachers and administrators of badly-needed discretion: "What we have is a system of justice that allows anyone to bring claims, whether it's reasonable or not, and to press it down to any disappointment - like, for example, a child's grade in a classroom."

"Here's the example that I suspect you've been offered many thousands of times," said Greenfield. "I'm a parent and my kid comes home and says, 'My teacher is treating me unfairly. She doesn't like this political opinion that I wrote.'"

"You go talk to the teacher, you go talk to the principal," said Howard. "But life involves all sorts of disappointments. It even involves unfairness. But when you try to push law down to guarantee fairness in daily relations, what you do is you take away everyone's freedom and you take away the satisfaction of teachers, their ability to do their jobs, etcetera.

"You have to accept the fact that life is life."

"Look, we see it every day, which is one of the reasons why Phil Howard is one of our heroes," said Randi Weingarten, who heads the American Federation of Teachers.

"There's some notion that has seemed to leave us, that teachers have a lot of common sense. And if you actually left it to their own professional latitude and judgment, and their own common sense, they could do a really good job," Weingarten said. "To trust people is what he's saying. And I think that's heroic."

But teachers' unions themselves don't trust the common sense of school administrators. The unions zealously bargain for highly-inflexible work rules, and that make it all but impossible to fire incompetent teachers.

"Common sense" sounds like a great idea. But what if it's YOUR young child severely injured when the swing breaks? Your middle school daughter strip searched on mere suspicion? Your loved on permanently injured after a surgery gone bad?

"It's ironic that a lawyer that works for a big law firm that makes millions of dollars representing banks, insurance companies and tobacco companies is talking about, 'Let's go back to common sense, and have less laws and less regulation,'" said Les Weisbrod, a Houston personal injury lawyer. Until recently, he was president of the American Association of Justice, formerly called the Trial Lawyers Association.

"You know, I have a lot of faith in juries, and in jury trials," Weisbrod said. "I think it's the best system on Earth: A jury of our peers. I believe that our judges work well, which is another thing that Mr. Howard doesn't believe. Mr. Howard doesn't believe that our judges judge, and that our judges are good."

Nowhere is the argument over "over-lawyering" more intense than in the field of medical malpractice.

Critics point to studies, like a 2006 New England Journal of Medicine report, that calls the overhead cost of malpractice litigation "exorbitant," and says the issue is so complicated that claims can result in verdicts unfair to both doctors and patients.

Not so, says Howard. And when it comes to medical claims, he indeed has no faith in juries . . . none at all . . . and wants the law changed.

Today, says the medical profession, fear of lawsuits has pushed medical malpractice insurance through the roof, and forced doctors to practice what's called "defensive medicine," meaning more tests and higher costs.

Howard wants malpractice cases decided not by a jury of laymen and women, but by special courts.

"We're advocating special health courts where if a hospital makes a mistake, that patient's going to get recovery within months, not the average of five years that it takes now," he said.

Dr. Albert Strunk enthusiastically agrees. He is a spokesperson for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. the specialty that is the most-sued of all doctors and - no coincidence - the specialty with the highest malpractice insurance rates.

Nothing illustrates the problem more dramatically, says Dr. Strunk, than lawsuits that flow from cases of cerebral palsy.

"The overwhelming evidence is that less than 15 percent of cases of cerebral palsy have anything to do with the baby not getting enough oxygen to the brain during labor," Dr. Strunk said. "And that's the premise upon which these liability cases against obstetricians are made, if a baby doesn't do as well or if a baby does have cerebral palsy."

"Sounds like what you're saying is that the way that the law, the adversary system, the jury system approaches these questions fundamentally misunderstands what doctors do, what patients need," said Greenfield.

"Well, again, a rational system is what doctors would look for because it would help us to remove the fear and anxiety that exists about the current system," said Dr. Strunk.

A common sense solution? Not if you talk to lawyers like Les Weisbrod, who says they represent the common man and woman.

"We don't have a special court for plumbers or architects or news reporters or lawyers," said Weisbrod. "And we shouldn't have a special court for doctors. And the fact of the matter is, just because someone's injured in a medical negligence case, doesn't make it a 'medical negligence case,' and doesn't make it a medical negligence case that will succeed."

And the much decried flood of lawsuits is not rising but receding. According to the National Center for State Courts, in the 10-year period ending in 2006, medical malpractice suits were down four percent; product liability claims also down four percent . . . and personal injury claims dropped a surprising 21%.

"There is no empirical evidence that lawsuits are on the increase, or litigation's on the increase," said Weisbrod. "If people are doing things because of a fear of lawsuits, in that regard, it's uncalled for, and it's been trumped up by people like Mr. Howard [who] are creating a so-called lawsuit crisis.

"Ultimately, the purpose is to take away rights of everyday people to address wrongs in front of juries, in our civil justice system. And that's not right. And it's not common sensical, either."

As for the notion of "Life Without Lawyers," well, consider what may be the most famous of all rhetorical assaults on the profession, from William Shakespeare, no less:

"First thing, let's kill all the lawyers!"

That's actually spoke by an outlaw, talking about how to undermine society.

"So, I assume even in the world that you look at there is some place where lawyers belong," said Greenfield.

"Sure; law is vital in a free society," said Howard. "But law is a framework for freedom. It shouldn't be a system of micromanagement where it gets in the way of everyone's daily choices."

"It sounds as if one of the trade-offs we would have to make as a society to get law out of our hair is indeed to accept the fact that sometimes I'm going to be hurt and there's nothing I can do about it," Greenfield suggested. "Sometimes I'm going to be treated badly and there is no remedy."

"That's absolutely right," said Howard.


For more info:
American Association of Justice
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
American Federation of Teachers
Covington and Burling LLP
"Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law" by Philip Howard (W.W. Norton)
New York City Department of Parks & Recreation

[kenhamlett]

What is clear is that the patient is the victim in the operating room and in the courts. This nation's doctors are poor examples of what is available in modern medicine although I must balance this by saying medical science as a whole is still barely out of the dark ages. Add to this the desire to maximize profit by both taking shortcuts in actual medical care and padding the bill with tests and unneeded procedures and the patient is again the victim.
If the victim goes to court he is at the mercy of a judge who could easily be biased or incompetent which could undermine the jury process. Again a victim.
Let's face it. A person loses any time the go into a doctor's office or a court. Sometimes he might get some assistance in his plight but it is seldom the result they most need.
I'll pass.

[ledpenny]

It will never change. For centuries, Britain and European nations were held to be obedient to Kings, Lords, Earls, whose power was from nefarious connections. The leaders of America, with Jefferson as the helm, tried to eliminate these power regimes. But the American ignored these historical lessons. Now these lords are called attorneys. They control the legislature, the presidency, the press, and well..the supreme court. Not just the common man's interpretor, they are in control of everything in the us of a.

[Think_About_It-]

How little has changed in 30+ years! This excerpt, from 1978, illustrates the consequence of our failings in "obedience to the unenforceable". Hindsight can refute and/or validate George F. Will's remarks (below), but note the insight of the remainder:

"George F. Will, the perceptive Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, noted just one example in the difference between the old liberalism and a new liberalism:

"The old liberalism delivered material advantages that were intended
to enable people to live the lives they had chosen. The new liberalism,
typified by forced busing and affirmative action and the explosive
growth of regulation, administers 'remedies' to what society's
supervisors consider defects in the way people live."
(Newsweek, 23 Jan. 1978, p. 88; italics added.)

Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being "society's supervisors." Such "supervisors" deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.

It is no accident that the lessening, or loss, of belief in certain absolute truths, such as the existence of God and the reality of immortality, has occurred at the same time there has been a sharp gain in the size and power of governments in many portions of the world.

Once we remove belief in God from the center of our lives, as the Source of truth and as a Determiner of justice, a tremendous vacuum is created into which selfishness surges, a condition which governments delight in managing. Trends become a theology. A religion of regulations emerges in which tens of thousands of regulations seek to replace the Ten Commandments.

And with this secular religion comes a frightening insistence on orthodoxy, enforced by the withdrawal and bestowal of benefits. Such governments inevitably tend to enlarge taxes and to stunt their citizens. John Stuart Mill observed:

"A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile
instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes?will find that
with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the
perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything will in
the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order
that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish."
"On Liberty", Great Books of the Western World, v. 43, p. 323.

This dwarfing of the individual is one of the prohibitive costs of a value-free society! The state will never wither away in a spiritually standardless society. It will simply swell and become more strong, more ominous, and more serious. Maxwell Anderson had a line in one of his plays in which a discouraged character asks plaintively why governments can't be 'small and funny' any more."

Neal A. Maxwell, "The Prohibitive Costs of a Value-free Society", address given to the Salt Lake City Rotarians, 7 February 1978, Ensign, Oct 1978, 52?55. Found at http://tinyurl.com/yhwgkek

[bill0bob]

re: blather by Think_About_It- October 18, 2009 7:47 PM EDT

George F. Will-- unrepentent neocon whack job!

Neal A Maxwell-- Mormon ("LDS") whack job, rewarded for his religiosity with the fatal gift of leukemia! Yay Elohim! Yay magic underwear!

The Old Guard just HATES it when their power starts to slip!

[bill0bob]

"he's a lawyer with Covington and Burling, a powerhouse international law firm that represents some of the biggest corporations, and nations, in the world."

"So why would such a figure publish a book whose title promises "Life Without Lawyers"? "

The usual reason is that corporations don't want any laws messing with their "right" to make ooo-gobs of money, so they try to get the little people all stirred up to fight "intrusive government" and those pesky "trial lawyers". In truth, they don't give a rats azz about the "little people". To them, the only good law is the law that eliminates any obstacles to profit. If you have to die for them to make a profit, they don't care. You have no rights. Only the corporation has rights. How did we come to this horrible situation? Because we gave corporations all the rights of citizenship, but none of the responsibilities.

[jokr8790]

BTW-while we're on the subject of frivolous lawsuits. Those lawsuits never get to a jury because they are disposed of by the judge in a ruling for summary judgment. If they are truly frivolous then the attorney gets sanctioned as the attorney who brought a lawsuit attempting to force the President to produce his birth certificate. The judge in that case dismissed the case and fined the attorney $20,000.00. Entirely appropriately in my opinion.

[bradkt1]

If it is done correctly, this is not a bad idea. We have taken categories of cases taken out of the courts before...employment discrimination cases, government contracts cases, IRS cases, social security cases and workmen's compensation cases are but a few examples. The key is that at the end of the administrative process, the matter can be appealed to court. Only a very, very few cases out of the many that went through the administrative process would ever go that far. The statute authorizing this administrative scheme could either put a cap on pain and suffering or prescribe the formula by which pain and suffering could be calculated. The same with legal fees. Punitive damages are not recoverable. My experience has been that most of these kinds of cases get settled long before going through the administrative process.

The biggest losers would be the trial lawyers. The big advantages are that this process takes a lot of junk cases out of the court system, cases are adjudicated much more quickly that they ever would be in the courts, legal costs are minimized, there are no wildly inconsistent punitive damages awards, decisions in similar cases are much more consistent with each other (at least generally) and when you have a group of administrative judges specializing in the area, the need for expert testimony is narrowed in both the number of experts and the scope of their testimony.

I litigated cases before several federal administrative agencies for 27 years before I retired. Such a system is workable and is far preperrable to resorting to the expensive process of resorting to the federal courts, which will take forever to even hear such cases, let alone to resolve them.

[jokr8790]

legacyabq, under your kind of reasoning, as anything can be used to injure someone, then lets not prohibit anything. I think your right so I'll send my 11 year old to school with my loaded Glock for show and tell. Usually I don't bother replying to complete morons, but you made it personal.

[robo1415]

WE have an "over-lawed" society because we have TOO many laws and TOO much government .....Allow more freedom in allowing people to pick their own schools and take care of their own healthcare and you'll have fewer legal conflagrations...

[dontknowitall]

I believe in common sense. Which there is very little of today.

[curse914]

Indeed, we need to get rid of those pesky worker and product safety laws. If you can not afford health care, "that is your fault". The saintly Free Market must be freed from the tyranny of regulation so that it may work its magic!!!! And by freedom to pick you own school robo means, the school you can afford, NOW THAT I FREEDOM, just like the founding fathers wanted...

[paherrmann]

A lot of these cases would disappear if we had a single payer health care system. For example cerebral palsy. People who have these children can't afford to care for their medical expenses. In Canada and the UK, these rare events are borne by everybody through their taxes. We educate them in schools through our taxes. But when it comes to care from a doctor, the family pays. Unless the family has great insurance through a large group, or are poor and Medicaid supplies care, a lawsuit ensues to try to get care for the child so the family is not impoverished. In the single payer countries, this does not happen. And if the insurance is a plan from a small employer (where the employee becomes a target for termination to save the company) or a private insurance (where the policy is likely to be terminated, or labeled pre-existing, or rates jacked up so high the policy is unaffordable) insurance doesn't work. Lawsuits provide a huge settlement that provides care for the child for life. In some cases I taught, the child was damaged by a mixup in connectors of gas in the delivery room. The mother got the wrong gas and died. The child was delivered alive but damaged.

It used to be not long ago, these children didn't even get an education. They were kept at home. Before that, most were turned over to the state to die from failure to thrive. So things have improved for them. Today they still live short lives for most but they are full lives to the extent they can live. Except for medical care.

[robo1415]

The US treats brain-damaged children much better than many alleged "Advanced" countries with socialized medicine.The UK has notorious disrespect for handicapped infants and so has The Netherlands.Because the government pays it makes only sense for the State to keep costs down,thereby leading to poor care.

[jokr8790]

I absolutely agree with you. The largest component of any personal injury case is current and future medical care. Therefore, under a single payer system large awards would be automatically reduced. It would be a real kind of "tort reform" with real benefits instead of the kind Republicans are always talking about which is reducing compensation to injured people in order to bolster insurance companies profit margins and increase CEOS already bloated compensation packages.

[sandy19731]

robo1415 that has been disputed by many, many, examples. People like you are boorish.

[chuerta_1]

This amazing and seemingly brave man is my new hero even thought lawyers in general are the absolutely last on my list of people I'd like to socialize with or have to deal with in any way, shape or form. I have been saying for some years now that we've become a society based on fear about what is going to happen to us next and how we can avoid anything bad ever happening to us ever again. Sorry Charlie...life is unfair sometimes and things happen that are unpleasant. We suffer losses. We suffer injuries. We suffer injustices. These things, this suffering, is what should be making us stronger individuals NOT fearful little children who think we must be protected against anything ever happening to us or anyone we care about so we don't have to be disappointed or upset.

If people could only recognize that they can prepare for, judicate and eliminate every possibility that they could be injured or have an injustice done to them that they can fathom and then step off a curb and get hit by a bus or have a meteor fall on their home while they are sitting around watching TV in the safety of their one home. So what are we going to do? Make buses illegal? Make meteors illegal? Come'on people. Be aware, be dilligent and be as prepared for the unexpected as you possibly can by knowing how truly strong and resilient you are and that you can handle anything but please lets stop trying to legislate every single possible thing that could happen to anyone anywhere and then punish them when it does. I'm 55 and have to say that while there have been improvements where improvments needed to be made to keep us as safe as we can be there are so many things that are either against the rules or the law or that we feel we need to sue about that we no longer truly are free Americans but only micromanaged by the government that we citizens lobby to make laws to ease our own personal fears and issues. Common sense and morality can't be legislated.

Laws tend to make people 'feel' safe but from what I've seen over the course of my life they don't necessarily make people safe. Laws really don't protect us but simply give us a way to punish those who have already done the damage. We act as if we should be able to be as irresponsible as possible in the secure knowledge that the government is there to make sure we aren't harmed in some way. It's time to bring personal responsibility back to our society and stop putting the responsibility for our personal choices, actions, fears and words on others.

[debinok1]

Frivilous lawsuits are the demons of our justice system. When you drive through McDonalds and order a cup of coffe and do not have the common sense to know that coffee is HOT, you spill it and get burned, instead of accepting the fact that YOU did not use common sense, you SUE McDonalds. These types of lawsuits are the problem. When common sense should prevail, it doesn't. Instead of accepting responsibility for the lack of it, people sue.

[jokr8790]

You don't know what the evidence was that the jury heard in that case. All you heard was what the media wanted you to hear from their angle and the insurance companies who have spent a fortune attempting to undermine Americas' civil tort system. I'm not saying their aren't some frivolous lawsuits, there clearly are. But some people want you to think that ALL lawsuits are essentially frivolous or you should assume that they are before you even hear the case. If they succeed in instilling that kind of mindset into people then they can prevent injured people from obtaining just and fair compensation.

[dee24x]

Stuart-Johns: I think you may have misread some of the comments. Agree that the article does not suggest an elimination of the justice system or malpractice suits. What the TV broadcast this morning DID suggest--very decidedly--was that LAWYERS should be eliminated. I do not think that this article supports that conclusion and I was very saddened to see CBS Sunday Morning resort to such a sensational and inaccurately provocative tactic to introduce the story. Do many laws need to be reexamined? Yes indeed. Does the influence of special interest lobbyists on lawmakers need to be reduced? Most definitely. Should lawyers receive all the blame for the current state of affairs. Most definitely not.

[stuart-johns2]

I believe a few of you are over reacting to what the man is saying. He IS NOT saying "do away with the justice system". He is not saying we should have "no malpractice lawsuits".

Try to read without bias and maybe you'll see that we DO HAVE an over abundance of silly laws in this country. That is what he is addressing. At least I did'nt get out of the article what some of you are reacting to.

[jokr8790]

Of course not, he wouldn't say that, because especially as he is a lawyer, he would lose credibility. These people start limiting your rights incrementally and then you wake up and don't have them anymore. Again, Covington and Burling, I misspelled it in my first post, represents only the rich and powerful, so consider your source.

[melchg07]

What is left out entirely in this article is the FACT that these cases where put forth in front of a Jury.

Maybe we should just do away with the entire Justice system.

This whole article is rediculous.

Obviously there are some non-credible lawsuits and there should a law set up where the judge can use his expertise to impose some sort of penalty for lawsuits which are deemed absolutely rediculous.

In the end it was JURIES that awarded crediblity to these lawsuits.

You take this away and you take away the average joe's only real way to keep fairness in society.

For example you take away the right to sue.....lets use peanut butter for example......the CEO of a peanut butter company knowingly allowed tainted product to be consumed by customers even though salmonella was evident.

Why the heck should I not be able to sue for things like that?

And if you argue that this is not the sort of thing that the article was talking about.......then my question would be...where do you draw the line?

Truth is that the justice system should not be tampered with just because we don't like some of the end results....we start playing around with reforming the justice system and we'll likely just make it corrupt and inefficient.

[ngtw]

Media outlets like CBS only legitimize these fringe arguments by giving them airtime. Let Fox "News" handle them. The "Tea Baggers", Glenn Beck and that crowd only become important because, for what ever reason, the mainstream media feels there is a necessity in covering their antics which unfortunately gives them the appearance of legitimacy.

[dee24x]

I watched this report on CBS TV this morning. I was shocked at the sneering, sarcastic introduction given by Charles Osgood. "Imagine a world
without lawyers," he announced gleefully. What followed was a confusing
piece that did not actually suggest that at all. Oh, the author of "Life Without Lawyers" did say that he felt there were too many lawyers. (Why is it that we often hear that remark from people who have had a very successful career as one? Concern about competition?) The slant of this piece as presented on TV was that lawyers are taking away our choices to do whatever we want without regard to consequences. It suggested that the playgrounds of yore are no more because of lawsuits. Well, as a teacher and woman in her fifties, I have seen dozens of children hurt on those playgrounds. As someone who played on them herself as a child, tell me, what is so great about metal slides that got so hot in the sun that they burned your skin or monkey bars that were never maintained and built over unforgiving rock hard asphalt? As far as the part about most teachers having enough "common sense" to teach without interference, I am concerned that that suggests that no regulations at all are needed in education. As a student back in the sixties I witnessed numerous disturbing examples of actual abuse of students by teachers who were strong believers in "not sparing the rod." Then, in an attempt to present a balanced view but actually served to further confuse the audience, this piece permits an attorney to point out some undisputed facts: that lawsuits are actually DOWN. Personal injury suits are down 21%. Hmmmm. Despite Charles Osgood's TV intro, this piece's main objection seems to be to the LAWS that have been created...often lobbied for by insurance companies. The laws are the domain of the LAWMAKERS, not the lawyers. However, I never heard a suggestion that we should get rid of the Congress or the Supreme Court. This story added nothing to the legitimate argument that intrusive laws that seriously limit or impede genuine human and civil rights need to be repealed. Rather, it perpetuated the currently popular idea of singling out lawyers alone as the scapegoats for many of the problems we are facing today. One of the few remaining politically correct social prejudices--blaming lawyers--serves no good purpose whatsoever. Are there problems in the legal field. Absolutely. Just as there are in medicine, government, and education. What this piece (especially as it was reported on TV) should have focused on was the impact the insurance industry has had on
suppressing an individual's "rights." Don't know if the slant given to this piece was designed to help sell the book or was a result of Mr. Osgood's personal feelings about attorneys, but presenting a story that does not even come close to proving its suggested premise is at best weak and unprofessional, at worst biased and unworthy of such an otherwise excellent program.

[johndevinejr]

I also saw the piece on CBS this morning and I agree with you. The only people who stand to gain if pwople who are harmed cannot sue are the people who have money. And the only people who would loose their only avenue of protection against reckless or negligent people or companies are those that have the least.
I thought the lawyer who sought a World Without Lawyers made a case that was clearly in favor of taking away the right to sue and calling it an increase in freedom, a particularly republican line of reasoning.

[Lawyers-Guns-n-Money-01]

by jokr8790 October 18, 2009 11:32 AM EDT
BTW- that "camping utensil" they were talking about at the beginning of the segment included a large bladed knife. I don't really believe in "zero tolerance policies," in this case it was ridiculous, but the parents should be warned that their children cannot take knives to school.
============================================================

Camping utensil? You say large, I say (channeling Crocodile Dundee): 'That's not a knife...'

[jokr8790]

Its still a knife and can still be used to injure another child.

[jokr8790]

Its still a knife and can still be used to injure another child.

[Lawyers-Guns-n-Money-01]

by jokr8790 October 18, 2009 12:04 PM EDT
Its still a knife and can still be used to injure another child.
===============================================================

A fork, a pencil, a rolled up magazine and all that nifty stuff in shop class can be used to injure another child too.

Good intentions are good until they're too good for their own good.

[Lawyers-Guns-n-Money-01]

by stuart-johns2 October 18, 2009 10:32 AM EDT
I agree entirely with this man. "Laws"..some laws, are just lacking common sense and serve to only fragment our communities, our country.
==================================================================

Pfffft, that's outrageous.

(Now I'm going to sue you.)

[stuart-johns2]

HAHAHA LMAO!! Ah LGM, I always look forward to your posts and I love your sense of humor.

[jokr8790]

BTW- that "camping utensil" they were talking about at the beginning of the segment included a large bladed knife. I don't really believe in "zero tolerance policies," in this case it was ridiculous, but the parents should be warned that their children cannot take knives to school.

[jokr8790]

Lets get real, Coving & Burlington makes a fortune from representing polluters, insurance companies, investment houses and banks. When he's talking about "freedom" this is the freedom of people like Madoff to promote Ponzi schemes essentially unregulated, our largest insurance companies and investment houses to bring down the economy and then get huge bonuses from the taxpayer for doing it in an unfettered atmosphere and for insurance companies to overcharge huge premiums for medical malpractice insurance. He thinks teachers should be able to teach without law interfering in their activities. So the teacher who singled out a Moslem student for ridicule, contempt and encouraged bullying by other "christian" students should be allowed to do so? The teacher who encouraged other students to point out to another student in class everything that was "wrong" with her. How about the teacher who wrote out CHANGE on a blackboard as Come Help A Ni**er ger Elected. How about a physician who performs an operation without studying the patient's charts or being unfamiliar with a patient's history? As to play grounds, children were being injured on essentially unsafe equipment and dangerous areas. Children have been made safer. These are just the usual squallings of someone who wants to protect profit at the expense of the ordinary individual. As for "health courts, he is promoting those because they would be easier for global law firms like his to control. People like him do not respect juries or the American jury system or any judges that they can't control through political influence or campaign contributions.

[dragon8me]

Your right joker. That is what he's talking about. Also, teachers here in rural Texas do the kind of things you described. One was making fun of my son last week for reading a book about witchcraft. Funny thing is he told her "what if I make it rain?", it did rain a couple of days latter, though it would have anyway. The point is they get away with this kind of thing and even rascist remarks and talking about killing the president because of the school board and superintendant alowing it for their "cause".
We need laws, yes but they need to make sence.