Litigation in America
by: Alan Moretti


"There are nutty judges and nutty juries out there. And when you get them in the same room, you sometimes come up with nutty verdicts."
- Coale

A frivolous lawsuit in America's distant past was rare. The mighty courts of our land prosecuted criminals, deviants and "evil doers" alike. Yet somewhere in our nation's developing prosperity the court's attention was diverted and started going after us, the law abiding citizens of America.

The courts don't have to attack us directly as indivuals, but rather by upsetting our country's free market economy. It appears clearer than ever those juries often think that large corporations are huge black holes overflowing with cash. With this mentality we might as well let the court systems take our wallets and dump everything out into the street for scavengers to pick up. I'll return to discuss those scavengers in a moment.

By suing corporations we are stealing our own paycheck. When corporations are taken to court, no matter how ridiculous the claim might be, it is the American public that pays. Americans watch the value of their stocks drop, the quality of products diminishes, and their personal wealth disappear. We get nailed on both ends of this issue. We lose when corporations win and we loose twice as much when they loose. So, who are the big winners on this one?

It's the scavengers, snatching those dead presidents out of our wallet. They are the corrupt trial attorneys who seek out their next corporate victim with a class action suit. These attorneys find "flawed" products or services that don't exactly fulfill the desires and expectations of the buyers. In an attempt to set everything right, the attorneys go after the companies through the courts forcing them to shell out all kinds of money to correct the situation and rescue their reputations. The American people have no one else to blame but themselves.

Then again this is just the free enterprise system in operation. There will always be the producers, the consumers, and the scavengers. The producers allow this to continue so they can make a profit, the consumers are often victims of their own ignorance, and the scavengers continue to pick up the crumbs they shake loose from our pockets, all thanks to our liberal court system.