On Dec 2, 8:27 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
F. Baum wrote:
On Dec 2, 3:37 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
I went through a long process where I gave the lawyer/plaintif equation
a lot of hard objective thought. In the end I came to the following
conclusion;

To me, it's obvious that the ultimate blame lies with the lawyers.

I think the blame lies with those pop up ads on the internet.
Seriously though, it is a chicken and egg question between greedy
plantifs or greedy lawyers. In my opinion the (Respective) State Bar
has way too much influence over the courts. Most people base their
knowlege of the Tort system on sensationalistic headlines. Probably
90% of jury awards (The McDonalds case, The Ford Pinto case, etc) get
substantially reduced on appeal, but that rarely makes the headlines .
Most of the cases against airframe manufacturers fail. The transcripts
of these cases are public record and they make for interesting
reading. Usually better than the sensationalist BS you read in Flying
or AOPA Pilot. This might provide you with a new perspective. The
reasons for the decline in GA are many and it is much too simplistic
(But kinda fun) to blame laywers. I did alot of upper division Law
coursework in college and was headed for Law school before I decided
to become an airline pilot. I studied many Liability and Tort cases
against airplane manufactures and the earliest ones I found dated back
to the 1920s. They peaked in the 70s. Look some of these up, they are
interesting.
FB
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Dudley Henriques- Hide quoted text -

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It's true the issue is quite complex and as such assigning it a single
failure statement might be excessive.
I spent considerable time involved with flight safety issues including
active accident investigation. I've been exposed to a fairly wide
spectrum of these issues myself.
This being said, I believe I understand your point clearly and accept
some compromise on basic premise.
I am still left with the basic study of the litigation equation that
states several initiation assumptions;

The plaintiff can seek a law suit but no suit can occur without a lawyer.
This scenario can be either ethical or unethical, but if unethical, the
responsibility lies with the lawyer as by simple deduction, the
unethical suit can and should be refused by the lawyer regardless of the
insistence or incentive of the prospective client.

And this just covers the scenario where the plaintiff makes the initial
contact.

Now considering the second alternative; that being the lawyer actively
seeking a plaintiff and we have an unethical scenario by definition.
Lawyers seeking litigation are initiating or attempting to initiate an
action that requires a plaintiff. In seeking that plaintiff, I see a
clear violation of ethical standard.

Now take the worst case scenario, which by mere chance I am witnessing
tonight as we speak.
I just finished listening to a radio commercial where an attorney is
advertising for people to "become familiar" with a fact that "the credit
card companies don't want you to know"; that fact being that you can pay
the credit card company much LESS than you actually owe them with no
penalty. This attorney is actively seeking clients to defraud a credit
card company while making a fee for the service.
This type of lawyer advertising should be illegal but is allowed under
laws passed by the same lawyers doing the solicitation.
This behavior is well beyond the pail and is wide spread in the legal
community.
To me at least, it is THIS type of activity by the legal profession that
has taken the justice out of the system and replaced it with nothing
more or less than a pure legally sponsored money making machine.

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Dudley Henriques- Hide quoted text -

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Im not denying that you have plenty of ambulence chasers out there. It
is far too simplistic to judge an entire profesion on a few shysters.
My only point was that if you get beyond the hype and read a few legal
briefs or court procedings, it gets kinda interesting. Accident
investigation and a liability trial are two separate things.