Ralph Nader Planning a Tort Law Museum in Connecticut

By STEPHEN SINGER | July 30, 2013

  • July 30, 2013 at 5:07 pm
    bob says:
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    nobody can deny that seatbelts have save tens of thousands of lives thru the years – as no doubt some of the other changes Ralph has endorsed have. but sometimes the pendulum swings too far the other way. how much does each U.S. citizen pay each year in increased costs due to bottom feeding attorneys that have swung that pendulum too far? greedy tort lawyers are a fact of life, Ralph.

  • August 1, 2013 at 5:47 pm
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    My understanding of U.S. law in it’s purest/idealistic form is a forum where people bring their disputes to get a fair and quick hearing aimed at peaceful resolution without violence. My experience and education of reality says differently:

    1> The system often makes it so risky for people to sue that they
    choose not to, and just suffer the insult and damages with no
    compensation or acknowledgement of their damages/injury.

    2> Attorneys do some work for FREE, but in most cases they are
    very expensive to hire.

    3> The cases we read about that make people think attorneys are
    bad news bottom feeders may be exceptions to the rule, but they
    seem all too common, and in mant cases unprincipled.

    4> Reading about criminal convictions of attorneys and doctors
    involved in fraudulent insurance claims damages the trust the
    public would prefer to have in all of those in service to the
    courts.

    5> In those cases where landmark decisions force product safety
    changes we all benefit from:
    a) They prove Congress and other legislators, and gov’t
    agencies have failed in their duties to regulate for public
    safety.
    b) Manufacturers still manage to make many products that are
    unsafe, but now their are three labels on each item all
    printed too small to read.
    c) When attorney’s or their clients are proven right, and win
    in court, they deserve fair compensation, but not windfall
    profits. Some standard ought to exist that allows excess
    “punitive damages” to be paid to the state or federal govern-
    ment to fund improved regulation rather than unfairly enrich-
    ing either attorneys or plaintiffs.

    6> People deserve a system that does a better job of protecting
    their reputation until they are actually convicted of a crime
    or in civil case until the settle or lose. The other side is
    it should be against public policy to allow settlements where
    the party paying refused to admit any responsibility, and the
    public is unable to learn that this person or company is really
    undeserving of their trust and future business.

    7> Law is complicated enough without lawyers writing so many bad
    laws that they claim we need a constant supply of new bad laws
    to fix. The only people really served by the current legal
    system are those who make a living from it!

    8> We could do better. And in the past we actually did better.



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