Why personal injury lawyers help keep our country strong.
I noticed on one of the listservs I follow that a fellow trial lawyer lost his case in court. The jury took thirty minutes to decide against him, which is always a blow after a long trial. We put our hearts and souls into our cases and there is little in life that hurts as much as a jury from the community telling you that you have it all wrong.
Anyhow, this lawyer, who by the way is an exceptional talent, wrote a long post expressing his disappointment at losing, but reaffirming his dedication to the cause. I wrote a response that I'd like to share here, because I think it reflects something that is true, no matter how you feel about our civil justice system:
I think what we are all learning together here is, while it's important to win for our clients, it's the fact that we are willing to fight in the first place that makes what we do so important.
People forget that jury trials aren't just a way to resolve a dispute. They were so important to the folks that set up our democracy that the right to a civil jury made it into both the federal and state constitutions as enumerated rights.
That means, when we're in a courtroom, we're not just fighting to get our clients justice. We're also playing a small but critical role in protecting everyone's freedom and liberty.
As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 83 (one of my favorite quotes):
"The friends and adversaries of (the proposed federal constitution), if they agree in nothing else, concur at least in the value they set upon the trial by jury; or if there is any difference between them it consists in this: the former regard it as a valuable safeguard to liberty; the latter represent it as the very palladium of free government." (A "palladium," by the way, is "anything believed to provide protection or safety.")
Okay, I know this all sounds corny, but in my family one side goes back to North Carolina and the American Revolution and the other is a constant stream of immigrants. So if what I have written is corny, fine. It is what is in my heart.
Congratulations to you and Jeff for keeping up the fight. Break a leg on the next one.
Bill Daniels
Schwartz, Daniels & Bradley
It's sort of interesting that, at the same time my colleague was recovering from defeat, one of the idealogues of the tort reform movement, Judge Robert Bork, filed a personal injury lawsuit against The Yale Club of New York City after he slipped and fell during a speech. Here's a copy of the complaint, if you're interested.
I'm beginning to understand that people like George W. Bush and Robert Bork know a secret they aren't telling us (see my earlier post on Dubya). The secret, is, I think, that lawsuits are actually good in a democratic society like ours, because they let us resolve our differences peacefully in a place of justice. We see in Iraq what happens when people try to settle their disputes outside of a legal system. George W. and now, Judge Bork, it would seem, agree.
Guess our Founding Fathers got it right.
Bill Daniels
Los Angeles, California / June 13, 2007
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