America and Lawsuits

The United States legal system ensures that every American who feels they have been injured or victimized is able to seek justice through the court system, clearly a noble and necessary protection. However, in recent decades the United States has earned the nickname as the most "sue crazy" society out there, in part due to major increases in lawsuits involving everything from hot spilled coffee to neighbors' disputes. But few Americans ever question what all of the senseless lawsuits do to the economy and what they say about America as a society and the legal profession. While ease of access to the courtroom is a major advantage in America, this ongoing trend has provoked too much interest in swindling money out of the judicial system. This rise in greed has replaced fairness, community values, and shedding a negative light on the legal profession.

The legal profession has always had its critics. Critic's have claimed that attorneys are too self-interested, that they are undertrained or trained in the wrong areas, that their primary function is to cause trouble for others, and that they charge too much for what they do. Like most generalizations, such claims are undoubtedly overstated, but at a time when public trust and respect for lawyers is at an all-time low, however, no criticism of the profession can be totally ignored. In Tocqueville's piece The Temper of the Legal Profession in the United States he goes to say that "they [lawyers] like most other men are governed by their private interest and especially by the interest at the moment" (320). In the war between corporations and the legal profession, this seems to be true. Over time, it seems like it has become a trend to sue big corporations over frivolous matters at best. Lawsuits, while doling out justice to true victims, also provide an opportunity for anyone to get rich simply by suing someone. There seems to be a war between corporations and plaintiffs' attorneys, in Grutman's and Thomas's piece entitled The Big Casino, they compare personal injury lawyers to "medieval alchemist who claim to make gold out of ordinary medals"(328). Personal injury lawyers are taught to stir up emotions in the jury and everything is premeditated, their word choice, their gestures, and the way they describe the victim's circumstances. Because while many plaintiffs' like to think that their attorney is truly concerned with their injury, the plaintiff must remember that after they win the case, the real winners are lawyers who can receive at least one-third of what the jury awards. It's easily conceivable that a personal injury lawyers could suck hundreds of thousands of dollars out of a small business in a successful suit and then walk away with much more of that money than the plaintiff. All of this and more surely does not help improve the image of the legal profession to society.

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