Law Firms And Insurance Companies

It used to be against state Bar Association rules for lawyers to advertise their services, specifically to prevent the "If you have a lawyer you have a lottery ticket" appearance. Then a lawyer took the restriction to court as a First Amendment violation, and won. I recall when this ruling was handed down.

Of course the consumer always pays whatever costs any business incurs; otherwise, they would be out of business. We have lots of those ads here in the Charlottesville TV market. One of them is just as you say: "Last year our law firms received a record judgement for a client..." There are ads for all sorts of legal services: accidents, workman's comp claims, wrongful termination, etc.

I don't know how you can "look at" them, other than tort reform (this is said to be a big cost driver in health care.) But since so many Congress critters are lawyers, and they make their money off of such suits, tort reform ain't gonna happen. And the thought of a judge enforcing frivolous lawsuit statutes is pretty much laughable.

As an aside: I've been called to jury duty many times in my life. I was in the pool--but not selected--in one wrongful injury case (someone slipped on a wet hospital floor while visiting) where the defendant's lawyer wore an eye patch. When we got back to the jury room and I asked the folks "Do you know what happened to his eye? The ambulance came to a sudden stop!" (No offense meant to anyone who may wear an eye patch.)

 

The legal system and lawsuits serve a "good" because--in conjunction with legislation--they rightly impose a cost for bad behaviour. The cost can not only be monetary...it can also be in the form of damage to the reputation. The problem arises when we feel there is less of a redress of grievances (and making someone "whole") and more of an extortion of funds.

The other problem lies in our systems that have become corrupted over time: specifically, legislative and judiciary. There will always be greedy humans in business and in life. To the extent they are not properly held to account, their numbers increase and drag others off the precipice of ethics and morals.

This was almost my launching point into the myriad parallel issues in the our culture, but I'll just put a period on it.

 

The judge should never have let this case go to trial.

 

And the lawsuit has been filed in that conservative bastion of San Francisco, California, aka "Trump Country."

And there's this:

Just stop.

 

We were rear-ended on the freeway by someone who said he had passed out from the heat, apparently with his foot on the gas because we were traveling at the speed limit or a few miles above. He pushed the fork of the U-haul trailer we were pulling into the back of our car, totaling the car. He was insured by State Farm and we weren't even offered near enough to pay off the car that he had totaled, let alone the fact that we had to rent a truck, and later a car, while we found one that we could afford to buy. The agent wanted to tell us about how much they had paid U-haul. Well, I didn't care how much they paid U-haul.