Sue Happy Lawyers

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by EE-BO

How do you figure? I gave, in what I thought was a good summary, a very precise example of where class action suits have been harmful to litigants with a serious need for justice, corporations and the general public- but have greatly profitted unscrupulous attorneys.

I have no trouble with 30-40% contingency fees. In fact, when you consider the sheer number of lawyers out there chasing good cases it is logical from a capitalist viewpoint that this is a fair fee range. Huge sums of money have to be invested up front by the firm with no promise of an award, and often collection is a long wait if there is an award resulting from a trial that then goes through the appeals process.

And with so many firms out there, it is not possible there is some massive collusion or conspiracy to charge high fees. If it were financially reasonable for a contingency fee to be lower- then the degree of competition among law firms would have driven it down long ago.

My point with the asbestos example is that in that particular type of class action where plaintiffs have widely varying degrees of real or potential future injury, there is a great potential for abuse as my example laid out.

Government intervention is not the answer. Sarbanes-Oxley legislation was public reaction to a perception that CPAs and corporations were not adequately governing their own behavior. The fact is, Sarbanes has done much good but has also created new ethical problems. As a SOX consultant I have witnessed many instances of CPAs not qualified to do SOX work accepting projects and "creating work" to remain employed. I shot down the local career of one such person last month.

For all the good things Sarbanes has done, it has yielded a whole new cottage industry of "SOX consultants" who have just about as much ethics as some asbestos litigation attorneys.

Granted my mentioning Medicare might have confused since that was not as direct an analogy as the Sarbanes example- but I think it proves the point.

The answer to this issue is for state bars to more closely manage the ethics of attorneys. The illegal activities I have noted above are well known in industries affected by asbestos, and yet these firms are still in business.

We don't need more laws. We need existing self-governance within the profession to be tightened up- as has happened in the accounting profession since Sarbanes.

Class action lawsuits and contingency fees in general are both good things. The world is a better place with both of those concepts firmly in place.

But unless attorneys step up and start policing themselves better, we will one day have the same kind of "knee jerk" reaction that we did with the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley.

Yet it will be worse since government has yet to threaten to do something if attorneys don't get it together on their own. The right role for government is to say "get your house in order, or else".

The way things are going, it is going to take massive public outcry and an even worse economic drain on society before government will have no choice but to crack down- and then you will have price controls and other completely inappropriate measures to appease an angry public.

JMHO.

Again, I just don't think you're addressing these issues at all - how exactly would self-regulation work, when generally the Court will determine class eligibility, and class members self-enroll (and are free to take their case as an individual as well)?

Also, you completely misunderstand the basic premise of some of these lawsuits - asbestos cases hinge on exposure, but the actual tort issues are mostly related to one or more of product defect, negligence in removal, or outright lying about the dangers. Exposure does not equal death, or even illness, in every case - for that reason, there may be NO DIFFERENCE in the eyes of the law between someone who is sick and someone who has been exposed with little or no (current) health issues. Basically, your example kind of sucks, too - I just can't really get on board with your point, because it may or may not even apply.

Sure, there's room for abusing class definitions - but the nature of competition means it behooves both sides to be strenuous in testing the definitions and each individual plaintiff. While class reps are used everywhere, the LAST thing you want is to have a set of plaintiffs exposed as frauds in trial. You'll have to trust me on this. Simply put, it's a self-correcting system - and since you're not upset with contingency, fees or the concept of class actions, I think we can see why there isn't the 'public outrage' you're calling for.