PAGE 9
NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , MARCH 2003
Of course the generals, like the lawyers, prefer a
booming economy to tap; one where boodles of corporate
worth creates boodles of personal worth — except that, in the
minds of lawyers, both money pools would nourish the lawsuit
mills. Conversely then, if a recession or depression came upon
us we might justifiably presume that personal assets could have
a practical minimum established in order to make litigation worth
a lawyer's time (perhaps factoring, as well, the reduced number
of human interactions considered to be legally assailable for that
year). In such a downturn we might also presume that not only
would lawyers have to lighten-up like everyone else, but perhaps
quit graduating so many of themselves — or maybe reduce their
present work force or retrain a few of their members. Or is that
a sound premise? If the economy went South, would lawyers
willingly become carpenters? Would they heft bedpans for
hospice or preserve quince jam or join the Peace Corps?
Pro bono certainly couldn't feed them...so...what?
I know what other entrepreneurs do when markets get
lean and they don't want to embark on a totally new venture.
Assuming they have at least some of their market left, they just
put that old inventive energy to work — reshaping their present
product or creating new products and seeking new suppliers and
new customers. Being disinclined to take an economic back
seat, our predacious “officers of the court” would be similarly
motivated. Given the degree to which our government is in
bed with them (and compromised of them) they would surely be
allowed to be motivated. H: ring “pushed the envelope" in the
heady times, lawyers would, in hard times, simply expand and
restructure the nuts and bolts brand of lawsuits. They could fund
another of their trade magazines and call it Lawsuit Horizons.
The trouble is, allowing lawyers to take the capitalist initiative —
to go out into the land, creating new litigants and new markets
— is tantamount to allowing embalmers and funeral directors
to go out and kill people in order to bring in business. Both
practices are the antithesis of life-affirmation.
And added to the effect of lawyer inventiveness and
lawyer population, there is still a third factor to fear. It is a
time-worn characteristic that is solidly American — so on the
surface of things it easily migrates from worthy capitalist to
lawyer capitalist. And few people seem to pick up on its ruinous
implications. It is simply persistence. In the questing of careers,
contracts or bed partners, Americans — and lawyers — when
losing the first few rounds, just keep at it until the opposition
caves in and they get what they want. It’s a point of national
pride. And when righteously serving today's tort, personal injury
and class-action endeavors, this prideful characteristic makes it
difficult to convince people of its other side — its dark, insidious
side — and what in an earlier time would have been defined as
its un-American side. As much as anything, this persistence of
lawyers will strap us to their blue sky concept of accountability
and as a result, the American Dream is going to take on some
very grotesque dimensions.
In 1989, after her great-nephew crashed his car in an
accident, a 92 year old Vermont widow was sued for $950,000.
The suit was for lending the boy money to buy the car; an act
which, for lawyering purposes, was termed "negligent entrust
ment.” Though there was public outcry at the verdict, the terrify
ing aspect was not so much the fact of the lawsuit but that the
lawyers tried it at all — and persisted — and got it filed and into
court — and what-the-hell and why not? Our courts were already
hosting precedent-lotteries.
And the jurors who were serving? Well, those poor
bastards were sucked into some perverted, convoluted form of
accountability propaganda — possibly oblivious to the fact that
this “fault-finding" could someday soon involve their own money,
depending on the focus and energies of any particular lawyer
at any one moment. The claim was one more innovative step
“forward” and one more building block for the freedom and
empowerment of litigation attorneys.
From low-echelon ambulance chasers to supreme court
pontiffs, lawyers are the single most autonomous group in this
nation. Their behavior is almost exclusively their own to oversee
since neither the voters, nor city councils, nor Congress, nor
Senates federal or state, seem to be part of whatever self
scrutiny lawyers employ once they are licensed, admitted,
elected or appointed. Their own state bar associations govern
the extent of — and the manner in which — they allow them
selves to extract for or from other Americans.
Be aware that “for” and “from” are the operative words
here. They are interchangeable prepositions that lawyers can
continually impress upon the life of a single American. As they
obtain something for someone, they simultaneously take some
thing from someone else and although many of our countrymen
could and do view that phenomenon as pretty neat, they haven’t
yet realized how easily and frequently they can become “the
someone else.” With the ever-expanding population of “lawyers-
as-trappers," there will soon be a time when the gains a lawyer
makes for you on any one day will the next day be canceled-out
by still another lawyer taking it from you; both actions producing
vulgar fees, of course The process will be a sort of perpetually-
mandated equity transport. It will bear an astonishing similarity
to the inner workings of governments with which we once did
combat. As a portent, it would seem that those Vermont jurors
— those who were told they should stick it to the widow for no
logical reason — likely couldn't perceive themselves as being
lured into a corruption of justice; could not envision the arm
bands of the Hakenkreuz being furtively slipped upon them as
they listened to the woman's attackers ramble in lawyereze.
And for all the lawsuit hookers on the street (those who
for a $30 check make millions for class action pimps), this brings
LISA BLACKSHEAR
me to still another point. The perpetual pattern I spoke of won’t
be confined to the high-flying end of the currency flow. Confirm
ing all the “trickle-down”, “domino” and “goes-around-comes-
around” norms, this thing will be thoroughly, relentlessly
pervasive. It will involve a pile of dead backyard leaves that
you had yet to sweep up. It will involve an incidental whatcha-
macallit or an imperceptible something-or-anotherthat the
neighbor’s child thought she saw maybe, possibly perhaps. It will
involve a potato salad that you made for an office picnic or your
tone of voice when you said, “G-morning! Wha's-up?"
It will be pure balls-to-the-wall Kafka where accountabil
ity is taken to its perverse extreme and every human interaction
carries with it an equalized and matching liability.And regardless
of the big and lofty cases, the more prosaic ones would still
carry their own litigation value. Lawyers could easily pursue
them in a cost-efficient manner. They could build this category
of daily lawsuits into a slick, computer based program where
accusations, challenges, claims, counterclaims and judgments
could all travel back and forth via the internet and be administer
ed (with the fees auto-extracted from your account) by one of
their central bureaus. They could keep the little guy in the vice
grip of their system even after industry wears down and takes-
off for greener pastures abroad; even after the medical profes
sion is operating from their own offshore republic.
(This futuristic scenario is lifted from a book manuscript
entitled 2084: A Manual for Citizen Compliance in the Litigious
States of America.)
Business folk should love this work because in address
ing our community of humanity it (necessarily) addresses our
community of commerce. And as a retired, gray warhorse who
no longer owns stocks, the author is impelled quite honestly by
his conservative citizenship The only question of him is: Why is
he taking the trouble? Especially when we don't see any board
chairmen out front making public statements on the subject?
Where are those captains of industry, standing before Congress
threatening to leave the country—or at the very least pressing
for some resolution? As a first initiative they could be placing
(additional) flags on their products — informing consumers as
to how much of the product's price reflects the costs of lawsuits,
staff lawyers and liability insurance? How about their informing
the public as to how long it will be before everything made and
marketed in America costs infinitely more than any item made
abroad — made in countries that do not permit lawyers to work
on contingency fees?
I frankly don’t know but in an effort to find out I wander
ed into still another university and approached a chair in its
school of management. I gave him the brief sketch of that
proposed book, 2084, and told him that I thought Americans
were all going litigation-cuckoo — and that someday soon this
would not only collapse our commerce but oppress and bankrupt
the average Joe and Josephine
Well, what I heard from his “management" lips was that
contrary to being repressed by my thesis-Nazis we are indeed
an emboldened people facing our adversary, which is industry.
Furthermore, we are emboldened because we are endowed for
the quest — and that our friends the lawyers got us that endow
ment But then, being lawyer-endowed to fight industry it is
inevitable that we become lawyer-enjoined to fight industry. And
enjoined we indeed are, since lawyers can conscript us into their
class-action schemes without even asking our permission. We
can now be forced to file lawsuits additional to being answerable
to lawsuits. How’s that for confiscatory Nazi policy? Hitler would
formally declare countries (and companies) ‘errant’, then occupy
them for being ‘errant’, then impound their capital; charging
them “his expenses incurred" in the occupation. American
lawyers in effect do that when they accept stock in corporations
as settlements.
At the moment our assigned targets are “old-economy"
firms that still make household detergents to drink, yo-yos to flail
against one’s teeth, and of course matches for baby to play with.
(Computer barons, your turn is coming.) And additional to citing
the legend of little guy vs big guy and all the other populist
standards, he touched on the dire prospect of “ineffective and
strangling regulation” (as I understand it, the only alternative
he could see to the far better scenario of endless free-market
lawsuits).
His references suggested that most of America was
comprised of mammoth industries with huge legal departments
— especially since he never once mentioned the thousands of
smaller businesses — those being driven daily into bankruptcy
or forced sell-offs by frivolous claims and irresponsible awards.
My take-away was that industry can afford it — and that he was
schooling a class of corporate weenies who would and should,
in the future, fall back in the face of anything a body of lawyers
throws their way
Stockholders, are you listening? Frivolous or founded,
punitive damage awards have trashed market capi’alization and
strangled credit across the country Workers, are you listening?
When you next delight in corporate America taking a hit, keep
tabs on your retirement plan. Your future worth could be lessen
ed by some dolt who misused your company's product — and
by lawyers who care not a toot for the connection between your
employer’s operating capital and your job Consumers, are you
listening? Do you want to be buying your toilet paper from, say,
France? As by default you congratulate the French legal system
you will experience a harsh union between the terms economy
and personal hygiene
Here I must say that without being told specifically that
the book 2084 conceptualized Litigation as Popular Culture, the
professor then unwittingly confirmed the phenomenon — and
the media that feeds it. Rather than citing texts to support his
comments, he gave me instead the title of half a dozen movies.
He loves those victim-focused flicks. He supplied synopses on
three of them
Given this brand of tutelage, we should arrive at the
11th hour fast And with endowed plaintiffs — and yellow page
advertisers — fueling the flames. I'd say that Asia and Western
CONTINUED ON PAGE 10
A lliance for D emocracy
GODFATHER'S BOOKS
AND ESPRESSO BAR
Audio Book Sales A Rentals * Cards *Pastnes
Incense * Occult A Metaphysical * Lattes A Literature
1108 Commercial • Astoria, OR 97103
Phone: (503) 325-8143
he Alliance-for Democracy is a new movement
that seeks to end the domination of our economy,
our government, our culture, our media and the
environment by large corporations.
T
We have united to examine the ways in which various eco
nomic interests either enhance or harm the health of de
mocracy and we focus on creating basic change.
End
corporate
rule;
revive
democracy.
Piecemeal reform has been rendered ineffective. We seek
deep systemic alterations to establish economic and politi-
cal democracy._____________________
681 Moiri Street, Waltham, MA 02451 • Tele: (781 ) 894-1 1 79 • Fax:(781)894-0279
E-mail: peoplesall@aol.com • Web site: www.afd-online.org