What you describe sounds nice, but it's a naive view of reality. In this
country we have way too many lawyers. When I was in college the people
who didn't know what they wanted to do went to law school. They are
competing amongst themselves to make the big buck, leading to disgusting
behavior. They also become politicians and write laws favorable to
their profession, usually influenced by the powerful trial attorneys
groups, like the Trial Lawyers Assn. They are allowed to "ambulance
chase" in their ads on TV, etc. We've become a country where you can't
live with them or without them. That's not good. Yeah, juries are
stupid, but what group of people wrote the rules to allow them to have
the power to impose ridiculous awards and make judgments on things they
know nothing about? And what group fights jury and liability reform?
The group that benefits from the high awards...lawyers through their
lawyer representatives in state and federal government. Also, don't
forget that the defense lawyers are also making the big bucks, adding to
the cost of virtually everything.

T o d d P a t t i s t wrote:
"Dudley Henriques" wrote:

what killed the very heart
of what once made up American general aviation, was the American lawyer!

For every lawsuit against an aircraft manufacturer, there's
at least one lawyer on the side of the manufacturer and one
on the side of the person claiming the aircraft was
defective because it didn't have a perfect anti-crash doodad
installed. As far as the lawyers go, it's the only part of
the process that's reasonably balanced. The final decision
usually comes down to the jury or the judge or the laws they
applied. If we don't like the decisions we're getting, it
strikes me that going after the only balanced part doesn't
make much sense. I'm more inclined to blame stupid juries
than anyone else.