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From: Tdub on 2 Jan 2006 19:12
> Consensus of judge and lawyers I discussed with is
that lawyers were greedy and/or, as young attorneys, wanted the
practice.

You are really playing fast and loose with the facts, Frank. No judge
would ever say that about the lawyers who tried a civil case before
him. "Practice", possibly part of it, in some cases, but "greedy" no
way. A juror in a civil case generally knows very little about the
case, they are only asked to resolve particular factual issues, and
determine whether the law, as stated by the judge, requires that the
resolution of those facts imposes liability on a party. You don't know
enuf about the case to be able to make such a comment. You lack an
understanding of the civil trial (and procedure) process and how the
role of the juror fits into that. I have been practicing law for 8
years, after a mid-career shift. I was an IT consultant b4 that. I deal
directly with clients and do civil litigation along with estate work.
The less educated a client, the more difficult it is for the lawyer.
For many reasons. Such clients don't understand the lawyer's role in
resolving their dispute, don't know how to relate to the lawyer, and
both have difficulty (fully) understanding each other in communication.
I suggest that if you don't have a college degree, or a substitute for
it by liberal self-learning, you are more likely to have difficulties
with lawyers. It'll end up taking a lot more of the lawyer's time to
get your objective accomplished because you are more difficult to
communicate with. You will tend not to trust your lawyer, which causes
problems. You won't be a good consumer and shop for a lawyer like any
other consumer service. Just blaming "lawyers" for your problems won't
help anyone, and will hurt the less well educated who may be less
inclined to trust their lawyer's judgment when they should. Most civil
cases don't get to trial for many reason. There are many screens they
have to go through in order to get to a full fledged trial. In
Illinois, a doctor must review a malpractice case and state under
penalty of perjury that it is likely there was malpractice. In other
states that don't require this, cases are subject to being dismissed or
summarily disposed of by the judge if the facts and the law of the case
do not support going to a trial. The legal system is far from perfect.
I would make a lot of changes to it if I could be the dictator, but I'm
not. I have to live with what we have. I've tried arbitration and will
never go that route again. When you arbitrate there is a big risk that
the issues of your case will not get resolved properly - the
arbitrators may improperly decided to "mediate" and just cut each
party's claims down the middle, rather than doing a timely and
painstaking review of the facts and the law in order to determine the
merits of each party's case. Just railing against "lawyers" in general
only makes you look like a fool. If you want to contribute a solution
you need to educate yourself to the process, discuss solutions with
responsible parties, and motivate the powers-that-be to make a change.
Unlike medicine, lay people can do this because the law is not for the
most part esoteric. Instead, it is for the most part common sense, and
has evolved over centuries in a piecemeal fashion in order to solve
particular problems at particular times. The biggest problem with
uneducated clients is they will never (for the most part) understand or
believe how much time it takes for a lawyer to resolve a particular
matter or achieve a particular objective. They think a lawyer has all
the law in his head, at any given time. Of course, this isn't true even
when the lawyer limits his practice to only one area of the law (as all
lawyers should do). The less well educated the client the more trusting
he needs to be in order for the lawyier-client relationship to be
functional, because such a client will not be able to understand the
reasoning the lawyer would normally share with them as to the advisable
approach to resolving the matter or the achieving the objective. Most
cases of lawyer-bashing arise from a lack of an attorney-client
relationship or a disfunctional one - consumers who haven't been able
to trust their lawyers, aren't educated enuf to be a functional client
for the matter at hand, or haven't been able to hire an attorney to
represent them in a dispute.

From: Tdub on 3 Jan 2006 22:14
The cost of resolving disputes is built into the cost of American
commerce and trade. This developed over a long period of time. It's
part of the insurance trade. As a contractor, you think you don't need
insurance. You don't like paying for it. But unfortunately you can't do
business without it. The reason is that it reduces risks and evens out
income flows so that normal trade and commerce is insulated from
adverse and unexpected events. You can rant all you want about how much
you hate lawyers but it won't solve any problems. Apparently you
haven't needed a good lawyer in your life. If you had, and you were
smart enuf to prepare yourself for that need, and smart enuf to find a
good, effective lawyer, you wouldn't feel the sad way you do. You
wouldn't be a good mentor to someone starting out in business because
you don't understand it. You only understand what you do, and you don't
want to take the time and effort to understand related areas of trade
and commerce.

From: Frank on 5 Jan 2006 09:13
I'm not playing fast and loose with facts. To clarify somewhat, judge
did say "lawyer greed" and other lawyers said "practice". Judge's
comment was in jury room after verdict.

Never saw any bias during trial. Lawyers comments were not trial
lawyers but others intimately familair with case and lawyers involved.

This was my first time as a juror but I prefer not to go into the
details I learned after the trial.

My initial comments were basically to say that too often someone will
pull the legal trigger too fast. Original poster should have father's
health as paramount concern and worry about medical malpractice
thereafter.

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