A quick reminder - the "justice system" is not about justice. Sadly, Confucious isn't presiding over every lawsuit, ordering that the baby be split in half to see who the real mother is.

Rather, our legal system (civil) is founded on dispute resolution. Two parties want something different, and the judge and the lawyers are there to try to come to an agreement about what to do. The fact that over 90% of civil trials "settle" these days is not an indictment of the legal system...rather, it's an indication that in most case people on opposite sides of the table can agree to a result without having to have a showdown at high noon in the town square.

-Jinkster

I heard on the radio late last week that an attorney is planning to sue Delta because he sat next to an obese man on the plane. He said he could not comfortably sit in the seat he paid for, so he didn't get his money's worth, and therefore was going to sue Delta for not enforcing their seating rules for obese passengers a la Southwest Airlines.

That's the 2nd lawsuit for Delta in as many weeks (remember the woman caught at the security checkpoint with the, ahem, 'buzzing' device in her handbag?)!

Unfortunately, I don't think that this is the case. In most situations where the two parties are able to sit down and agree to a mutually satisfactory result, no suit is brought in the first place - just one side's lawyers negotiating with the other side's lawyers. Before you can truly say what the high out-of-court settlement rate is due to you have to break down the cases according to WHY they were settled out of court. If most of them are due to each side negotiating in good faith and coming to a mutually agreeable solution that's one thing.

But far too many cases are settled out of court simply because the side being sued knows that it will cost more to defend the suit than the settlement cost will be and all to many suing attorneys operate - by choice - right in that zone. You sue based on any pretext without regard to the merit of the case - you simply be sure to not get so ridiculous as to cross the line into what even the legal system will not tolerate. Then you offer to settle out of court for substantially less than what it would cost the defendent to take it to court - even when both sides know full well that if it went to trial the plaintiff would almost certainly lose. But the merits of the case are irrelevant.

If I sue McWidgets claiming that residual solvent fumes in the building I work in - and which came from the prior owner of the building fifty years ago - is what made my son go blind at the age of three then good old McWidgets can pretty easily estimate how many hundreds of thousands - or millions - of dollars it will take to defend the case in court even if there is little evidence that the solvent in question was ever used in the building, that the level currently present is barely detectable and that there has never been a link established between the solvent and blindness in those exposed to it let along between trace amounts of solvent and blindness in the children of people exposed to it. That doesn't matter, if I offer to settle for a quarter of what they expect to spend to defend the suit and agree to sign a statement to the effect that the settlement doesn't imply guilt or negligence on the part of McWidgets then there is a real strong chance I will almost certainly get my settlement.

There are lots of laywers out there that operate in just this manner - despite the fact that most lawyers do NOT operate this way, would never consider operating this way and despise the lawyers that do. And my own profession of engineering is not immune to these dregs as well. Who do you think that these sleaseball lawyers go to to get all kinds of "expert opinions" about how the trace solvent fumes that are below detection limits are capable of causing blindness in this poor little child? They go to engineers and doctors and psychologists and other "professionals" who will say what ever they get paid to say. These lowlifes represent a tiny fraction of their respective profession - even a tiny percent of the people that testify as expert witnesses - and they are pretty universally despised within their profession. But that doesn't matter and they don't care any way - they have found a gutter within our legal system that they can exploit and they don't care what's right or what's wrong or what people think of them and as long as our legal system refuses to acknowledge and deal with it it will continue.

On a broader indictment of our system, consider this. Whenever the concept of "loser pays" is brought up for discussion, the legal profession quickly and broadly fights against it using some variant of the claim that under a loser pays system it would be impossible for the poor disadvantaged victims to seek redress because of the potential cost to them if they lose. We are told that it is a matter of justice and not money. Following on the heels of this argument is usually the claim that lawyers take cases on contengency bases out of a desire to make sure that everyone, especially those that can't pay, have access to this great legal system of ours. Let's say that we buy these arguments hook, line, and sinker. Then why aren't there lawyers continually offering their services to the defendents in these cases regardless of ability to pay? Why is it right and proper that the system be structured to ensure that it simple and feasible for anyone to bring suit, whether they can pay or not, and yet it is not right and proper to ensure that everyone can defend themselves from a suit, whether thay can pay or not? I see ad after ad after ad on TV, on the radio, in the phonebook from lawyers willing to file suits for me at no cost to me yet I have never seen one single ad offering to defend someone for free that has been sued. So is it about justice or about money?