Tax Lawyer's Blog

George Will wrote this in his book review of Philip Howard’s Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from too Much Law:

Defensive, and ludicrous, warning labels multiply because aggressiveness proliferates. Lawsuits express the theory that anyone should be able to sue to assert that someone is culpable for even an idiotic action by the plaintiff, such as swallowing a fishing lure.

A predictable byproduct of this theory is brazen cynicism, encouraged by what Howard calls trial lawyers “congregating at the intersection of human tragedy and human greed.” So: A volunteer for a Catholic charity in Milwaukee ran a red light and seriously injured another person. Because the volunteer did not have deep pockets, the injured person sued the archdiocese — successfully, for $17 million.

The thread connecting such lunacies is a fear permeating American life. It is, alas, a sensible fear arising from America’s increasingly perverse legal culture that is the subject of what surely will be 2009′s most needed book on public affairs — Howard’s “Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law.”

And listen to these examples Will gives of a law system run completely amok:

• Called to a Florida school that could not cope, police led a disorderly student away in handcuffs, all 40 pounds of her 5-year-old self. No official at the Florida school would put a restraining arm around the misbehaving child lest he or she be sued, as a young member of Teach for America was, for $20 million (the school settled for $90,000), because the teacher put a hand on the back of a turbulent seventh-grader to direct him to leave the classroom.
• Another teacher’s career was ruined by accusations arising from her having positioned a child’s fingers on a flute.
• A 2004 survey reported that 78 percent of middle and high school teachers have been subjected to legal threats from students bristling with rights.
• In a Solomonic compromise, schools in Broward County, Fla., banned running at recess.
• Long Beach, N.J., removed signs warning swimmers about riptides, although the oblivious tides continued.
• The warning label on a five-inch fishing lure with a three-pronged hook says “Harmful if swallowed”;
• The label on a letter opener says “Safety goggle recommended.” 
• Students, sensing the anxiety that seizes schools when law intrudes into incidental relations, challenge teachers’ authority.

And the costs of these ridiculous protective measures are dutifully passed on to the consumer.

It’s easy to blame all of this flim flammery on lawyers, but the problem with our judicial system was not created by lawyers, but rather by a society that has taught its members that anything untoward that happens to them is someone else’s fault. Let’s face it, we have become a society of wimpy, whining victims who are either too immature or too immoral to accept the fact that just getting out of bed in the morning carries with it a certain level of risk.

Having said that, I think it’s all Ralph Nader’s fault and intend to sue him for it?

Footnote:

¹  I used to say that we’ll eliminate the need for lawyers the day non-lawyers stop screwing over other non-lawyers.

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