Linda: Apparently you forgot your earlier insinuating claim of being more educated and denigrating those who disagree w/ you as ignorant. Here is what you posted in an earlier post:
\”You, too, can get rich, Jacqueline. Just get hit by a drunk driver so that you end up in a wheelchair. It will be great. You\’ll get millions of dollars and not have to work as a peon anymore. Such a deal!
Your ignorance about the civil justice system and the way it works is rather stunning. With a little investigation, I think you will find that the biggest cost the carriers incur is in defending claims, not settling them.\”
I know very well how the civil litigation process works…..having been hit by an uninsured driver and left crippled as a result when I was 24 years old back in 1991. I went from earning a middle-class living as a union plasterer to being unable to earn anything, ending up destitute after my savings ran out.
Adding insult to injury, I was denied SSI after being left permanently disabled. In order to get a $500/mo SSI pittance from social security as someone who became suddenly disabled at a young age, I was told I would have to pay steep lawyer fees out of the proceeds. A lawyer who was NOT economically disadvantaged due to losing his/her ability to make a living and who did NOT suffer, would be entitled to over a third of any eventual SSI award I may get. It was unaffordable for me to try to fight for the crappy $500/mo SSI I was entitled to that you really can\’t live on. $500 and change a month is hardly a king\’s ransom. I would have had a hell of alot less than that after a lawyer finished grabbing up a significant chunk of that back-due award, not including unaffordable up-front filing fees, so I didn\’t bother because I just couldn\’t afford to access the justice system. Getting a million dollars would have been a blessing because I got NOTHING. So spare me the stupid sarcasm that I too could get rich if I was hit by a drunk driver and ended up in a wheelchair. Been there – done that. The deal I got was a hell of alot worse than your sarcastic innuendo – I got nothing because the party who hit me had no insurance and my lawyer didn\’t see fit to fight for me to make sure that any future earnings or assets the guilty party may acquire be garnished to pay me for causing me to lose the ability to work and support myself when she ran a red light and was driving illegally without insurance.
I struggled overcoming the poverty resulting from becoming disabled and overcame the disability itself in getting a B.S./B.A. degree in Math/IT. Then some lawyers-turned-politicians sold this country out w/ things like NAFTA, Gatt, and now CAFTA making off-shoring any and all American jobs, I found myself without any job opportunities as a 30-something year old disabled woman for getting a good job in the field I \”re-trained\” for – IT. Obviously, I am not in the IT field now – I am an independent P & C agent/broker, and I am far from rich – not even close to upper-middle-class, considering I had to create my own \”job\” when no one would hire a disabled woman approaching middle-age. Where were the altruistic lawyers then? Wasn\’t disability and age discrimination in being denied jobs a violation of my civil rights? There are laws on the books that deal with that, but no way to access any justice if lawyers feel a legitimate case of job discrimination simply isn\’t as glamorous to take up as a case of some nitwit spilling her coffee on her lap, then suing MacDonalds for her own stupidity, or some thin-skinned highly-paid Texaco executives getting offended at being called \”jelly beans\” by other executives and turning it into a multi-million dollar race discrimination suit while so many poor and disenfranchised blacks, women, disabled people, and people over age 40 can\’t even get jobs that would lift them out of poverty, never mind put them into the wealthy top percent!
If I could have gotten a chance for a good job like some executive position, do you think I would have sued over some stupid sexist or able-ist remarks? Hell, I would have been damn grateful just to get the chance for a decent job like that in the first place!
I created my own \”job\” as an independent P & C agent on a shoestring budget with absolutely NO money or access to credit or capital, just my licenses, knowleedge and the computer I have had since college 8 years ago.
I will never again be able to compete in a martial arts tournament. I missed out on the best years of my life because of ending up disabled 2 weeks prior to my 24th birthday. When most of my friends were moving up in their careers, getting married, buying their first homes and having children, I was struggling with the physical, emotional and financial impact of having a disability and being marginalized by society because of it. Being disabled also did not exactly make me a desirable potential mate, since I was physically limited and most guys just don\’t find themselves attracted to women who must use braces and a walker just to get around, and whose poverty might make them wholly economically dependent on their potential mate. So spare me the insinuation that I don\’t understand what it means to suffer from being disabled.
I lost out on 11 prime earning years of my life where I was destitute, going through college on Pell Grants and student loans, eating Ramen noodles cooked in a microwave, and suffering from lack of ability to afford and get dental care while I scraped to survive on student aid stipends in my endeavor to \”re-train\” for a new career that someone with a physical disability could do.
So there is not a whole hell of alot you can tell me about the justice system, litigation, what someone who becomes disabled goes through, and how humanitarian most lawyers are because I have lived it. The ONLY help I got was my Comprehensive First Party Benefits on my own auto insurance policy from one of those \”terrible insurance companies out to take advantage of customers\”, which was a hell of alot more than the absolute nothing I got from the justice system, and lazy lawyers who don\’t want to actually have to work to fight the good fight for a client.
Jaqueline, your story nearly brought me to tears. There are many people in similar circumstnces who have all but stopped living, but you hung in there and made what you could of the cards you were dealt, and that is truly inspirational. I cannot say that I would have done as well had the same thing happened to me at twenty-three.
Aside from being my morning inspiration you also provide corraboration of my point: that lawyers write the laws to suit themselves, find servile congressmen and senators to approve them, then milk the system for all it\’s worth. To actually NEED an attorney just to get $500/month SSI benefits is proof that at least a significant and influential portion of the bar is engaged in what amounts to a protection racket. The practice of law has gone far from justice and protecting rights, and become a means of defrauding and robbing people in particular, and society at large. It is truly pathetic.
Proverbs 3:3-8, \”Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: so shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man. Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.\”
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Linda: Apparently you forgot your earlier insinuating claim of being more educated and denigrating those who disagree w/ you as ignorant. Here is what you posted in an earlier post:
\”You, too, can get rich, Jacqueline. Just get hit by a drunk driver so that you end up in a wheelchair. It will be great. You\’ll get millions of dollars and not have to work as a peon anymore. Such a deal!
Your ignorance about the civil justice system and the way it works is rather stunning. With a little investigation, I think you will find that the biggest cost the carriers incur is in defending claims, not settling them.\”
I know very well how the civil litigation process works…..having been hit by an uninsured driver and left crippled as a result when I was 24 years old back in 1991. I went from earning a middle-class living as a union plasterer to being unable to earn anything, ending up destitute after my savings ran out.
Adding insult to injury, I was denied SSI after being left permanently disabled. In order to get a $500/mo SSI pittance from social security as someone who became suddenly disabled at a young age, I was told I would have to pay steep lawyer fees out of the proceeds. A lawyer who was NOT economically disadvantaged due to losing his/her ability to make a living and who did NOT suffer, would be entitled to over a third of any eventual SSI award I may get. It was unaffordable for me to try to fight for the crappy $500/mo SSI I was entitled to that you really can\’t live on. $500 and change a month is hardly a king\’s ransom. I would have had a hell of alot less than that after a lawyer finished grabbing up a significant chunk of that back-due award, not including unaffordable up-front filing fees, so I didn\’t bother because I just couldn\’t afford to access the justice system. Getting a million dollars would have been a blessing because I got NOTHING. So spare me the stupid sarcasm that I too could get rich if I was hit by a drunk driver and ended up in a wheelchair. Been there – done that. The deal I got was a hell of alot worse than your sarcastic innuendo – I got nothing because the party who hit me had no insurance and my lawyer didn\’t see fit to fight for me to make sure that any future earnings or assets the guilty party may acquire be garnished to pay me for causing me to lose the ability to work and support myself when she ran a red light and was driving illegally without insurance.
I struggled overcoming the poverty resulting from becoming disabled and overcame the disability itself in getting a B.S./B.A. degree in Math/IT. Then some lawyers-turned-politicians sold this country out w/ things like NAFTA, Gatt, and now CAFTA making off-shoring any and all American jobs, I found myself without any job opportunities as a 30-something year old disabled woman for getting a good job in the field I \”re-trained\” for – IT. Obviously, I am not in the IT field now – I am an independent P & C agent/broker, and I am far from rich – not even close to upper-middle-class, considering I had to create my own \”job\” when no one would hire a disabled woman approaching middle-age. Where were the altruistic lawyers then? Wasn\’t disability and age discrimination in being denied jobs a violation of my civil rights? There are laws on the books that deal with that, but no way to access any justice if lawyers feel a legitimate case of job discrimination simply isn\’t as glamorous to take up as a case of some nitwit spilling her coffee on her lap, then suing MacDonalds for her own stupidity, or some thin-skinned highly-paid Texaco executives getting offended at being called \”jelly beans\” by other executives and turning it into a multi-million dollar race discrimination suit while so many poor and disenfranchised blacks, women, disabled people, and people over age 40 can\’t even get jobs that would lift them out of poverty, never mind put them into the wealthy top percent!
If I could have gotten a chance for a good job like some executive position, do you think I would have sued over some stupid sexist or able-ist remarks? Hell, I would have been damn grateful just to get the chance for a decent job like that in the first place!
I created my own \”job\” as an independent P & C agent on a shoestring budget with absolutely NO money or access to credit or capital, just my licenses, knowleedge and the computer I have had since college 8 years ago.
I will never again be able to compete in a martial arts tournament. I missed out on the best years of my life because of ending up disabled 2 weeks prior to my 24th birthday. When most of my friends were moving up in their careers, getting married, buying their first homes and having children, I was struggling with the physical, emotional and financial impact of having a disability and being marginalized by society because of it. Being disabled also did not exactly make me a desirable potential mate, since I was physically limited and most guys just don\’t find themselves attracted to women who must use braces and a walker just to get around, and whose poverty might make them wholly economically dependent on their potential mate. So spare me the insinuation that I don\’t understand what it means to suffer from being disabled.
I lost out on 11 prime earning years of my life where I was destitute, going through college on Pell Grants and student loans, eating Ramen noodles cooked in a microwave, and suffering from lack of ability to afford and get dental care while I scraped to survive on student aid stipends in my endeavor to \”re-train\” for a new career that someone with a physical disability could do.
So there is not a whole hell of alot you can tell me about the justice system, litigation, what someone who becomes disabled goes through, and how humanitarian most lawyers are because I have lived it. The ONLY help I got was my Comprehensive First Party Benefits on my own auto insurance policy from one of those \”terrible insurance companies out to take advantage of customers\”, which was a hell of alot more than the absolute nothing I got from the justice system, and lazy lawyers who don\’t want to actually have to work to fight the good fight for a client.
Jaqueline, your story nearly brought me to tears. There are many people in similar circumstnces who have all but stopped living, but you hung in there and made what you could of the cards you were dealt, and that is truly inspirational. I cannot say that I would have done as well had the same thing happened to me at twenty-three.
Aside from being my morning inspiration you also provide corraboration of my point: that lawyers write the laws to suit themselves, find servile congressmen and senators to approve them, then milk the system for all it\’s worth. To actually NEED an attorney just to get $500/month SSI benefits is proof that at least a significant and influential portion of the bar is engaged in what amounts to a protection racket. The practice of law has gone far from justice and protecting rights, and become a means of defrauding and robbing people in particular, and society at large. It is truly pathetic.
Proverbs 3:3-8, \”Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: so shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man. Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.\”