America's civil
legal system is too frequently abused by trial lawyers filing lawsuits in hopes of
extracting quick settlements no matter the defendants'
guilt or innocence. Worse, these same lawyers often become wealthy through such
litigation while the purported victims of wrongdoing ultimately get only token
compensation. Most Americans understand this, but how many of them realize
their state and local governments may also be promoting this crooked system?
In the 1990s, the
landmark tobacco settlement made multimillionaires out of a small group of
trial lawyers who were permitted to represent individual states. It has since
become increasingly common for state, county and municipal governments to lend
their legal authority to private lawyers working on a contingency basis. . Such
outsourcing supposedly lets state governments pursue cases they might not
otherwise. But this is also part of the argument against it. The practice
allows litigious mercenaries, cloaked in a borrowed mantle of government
authority, to advance novel legal theories designed not to redress wrongs, but
rather to enrich themselves and set precedents for future litigation. A decade
ago, for example, some of them sued gun manufacturers for the mere act of
manufacturing guns that worked properly. Congress
prevented this, but trial lawyers have since pursued similar silliness in other
areas.....To Read More....
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