Big Business vs. Trial Lawyers - Some Sense from Alabama

It's hard to believe but the publisher of a small town newspaper in Lanett, Alabama of all places has managed to distill the key differences between the interests of Big Business and Lawyers representing people who have been injured. With just a little intelligance, it is easy to distill these differences. Here is what was said in the Valley Times News:


By CY WOOD Editor-Publisher Published Thursday, May 25, 2006 11:52 AM EDT

The June 6 match-up between Sen. Gerald Dial and Kim Benefield for the Alabama Senate District 13 seat started out as a legislative contest, but it’s devolved into a battle of special interests.
Alabama voters can count on at least four special interest groups insinuating themselves into practically any contested election in the state. The big four are the education lobby (Alabama Education Association), the business lobby (Business Council of Alabama), the agricultural sector (Alfa) and the trial lawyers.
The education folks and the Alfa folks tend to spread money around evenly. After all, just about everyone is a supporter of education. It’s just a matter of degree. And what legislator wants to do something that would penalize pine tree growth in the state?
The business folks and the trial lawyers, though, are more into the litmus test mentality when it comes to legislative races. People who don’t understand politics (that’s 99.9999 percent of the sentient population) probably don’t understand why it’s always the business lobby on one side and the trial lawyers on the other.
The simplest explanation is that trial lawyers are prone to sue businesses when ordinary people get hurt, physically or financially, by the products or actions of companies. That’s an understandably adversarial relationship.
Trial lawyers want legislation passed that makes it easier for people to seek relief in the courts. Business wants legislation passed that makes suing companies more difficult.
These two behemoths (in terms of campaign activism) spread huge sums of money around to help people who think the way they do get elected to legislative seats.
Both the trial lawyers and the business groups will tell you, with complete sincerity, that their motivating principle is good government. Most ordinary people understand that what they really mean is they are looking out for their own best interests.
After all, that’s why they are called special interests — they are interested in a special group, themselves.
In recent years the phrase trial lawyers has become the principle pejorative of conservative campaign rhetoric. The effort has been effective: Many voters are scared to death of trial lawyers.
Why? Trial lawyers are the people who take up for the little guy in court. Yes, some trial lawyers make a lot of money suing big companies, and they are often criticized for taking a third or more of the settlement when they win a case.
What’s overlooked in this negative characterization is that sometimes the little guy is a victim, and by definition, because he’s a little guy, he often has no resources to seek redress for the wrongs done to him.
Trial lawyers look at such cases, and if they believe a wrong has been done, they assume the cost of going to trial. If their client wins, they get a big piece of the judgment or settlement. If their client loses, they get nothing.
As a newspaper editor, I often have people tell me I’ll be hearing from their lawyer. In most cases, those folks don’t have a lawyer, and if I were in the wrong, the only way most of them would ever be able to sue me would be if a trial lawyer took their case on a contingency basis.
That doesn’t worry me as a responsible editor, because I’m not intentionally going to hurt someone and leave myself and the newspaper open to a lawsuit.
If the business community was equally confident of the way it conducts business, it wouldn’t have anything to worry about where trial lawyers are concerned.
So here’s the bottom line: If a candidate is getting money from trial lawyers, it’s because the trial lawyers think the candidate will be more supportive of the trial lawyers’ agenda than the business community’s special interests. If a candidate has the financial support of business groups, it’s because that candidate is viewed as favorable to the interests of the business community
Voters need to ask themselves, “Which candidate is most likely to support legislation that will benefit me, an average citizen who doesn’t own a big business and doesn’t have a law degree?” The answer should be obvious.
Have you ever noticed that when it comes to frivolous lawsuits, only people who are being sued consider the lawsuit frivolous?
No doubt there are some bad apples among trial lawyers, but if the same weren’t true of the business community, we wouldn’t need trial lawyers.


Food for thought.

Stewart M. Casper
Casper & de Toledo LLC
1458 Bedford St.
Stamford, CT 06905
Tel. (203) 325-8600
Fax (203) 323-5970
Board Certified in Civil Trial Advocacy by the National Board of Trial Advocacy
http://www.casperdetoledo.com