That Bill Shakespeare. Definitely a fount of good ideas. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
OK, maybe not all. It’s not the profession that’s the problem, but the people in it today.
Lawyers, at least in this country, used to have a heroic stature in the minds of the public. Abraham Lincoln was a well-respected lawyer before being elected president. Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan squared off in the celebrated “monkey trial” in Tennessee in the 1920s, debating humanity’s right to question the way the world works. In the 1950s, Thurgood Marshall argued Brown vs. Board of Education, a case that finally put the first cracks in state-sponsored segregation. In fiction, too, lawyers were portrayed as champions: Erle Stanley Gardner’s “Perry Mason” novels and the subsequent 1950s TV program showed ethical people defending the unjustly accused.
Now? Goodbye, Perry. Make way for Lionel Hutz, the incompetent, unethical attorney retained by Bart Simpson. Lawyers today are mostly seen as little more than lawsuit initiators or slick talkers who will do anything to win a case, and who seem to have all the compassion of a mercenary toward their clients.
A case in point is the proliferation of lawsuits today by people who make Forrest Gump look like Albert Einstein. Of course you remember in 1996, when McDonald’s was sued by a woman charging that its coffee scalded her. Duh, if one puts a Styrofoam cup between one’s legs while driving, there is a chance of liquid spilling out. And hot liquids do have a tendency to scald. But thanks to her lawyers, she won a multi-million dollar settlement.
Another payday for dimwits is in the offing, with a man in Atlanta suing the makers of “Liquid Fire” drain cleaner because he was burned by the stuff. How was he burned, you ask? Dimwit number two thought the original, spill-proof container was “too flimsy,” and so decided to move it into a safer container. Guess what? It spilled. The Man With Less Common Sense Than a Lemming is taking the company to court, claiming that the original bottle design “forced” him to transfer the goop.
Finally, former Eagles frontman Don Henley is faced with not only a lawyer, but a lawyer with a thesaurus. According to the Associated Press, a fan at an Oct. 4 concert claims Henley whacked her with a maraca while she was taking a photograph. Her lawsuit alleges “highly unpleasant mental reactions, including fright, horror, disappointment, chagrin, worry, disgrace, embarrassment (pause for breath), indignity, ridicule, shame, humiliation, anger and outrage.” Sounds more like she’s suing over high ticket prices. Y’know, some celebs are touchy about having their pictures taken (for instance, Sean Penn), so perhaps a tap with a maraca just means “put the camera away.” By the way, there were enough witnesses, so why not charge him with assault?
Why all the lawsuits today? Some say that it’s just modern society ­ people looking for monetary satisfaction to soothe their injured egos ­ or that it’s a “something-for-nothing” mindset. I don’t think it’s either. While there are lawsuits that need to be filed, such as lawsuits against patently defective products or wrongful deaths, or lawsuits seeking redress for atrocities, most of the “nimrod” lawsuits like the three above are, in my opinion, filed because there are too many lawyers. For every Erin Brockovich, there are 20 “whiplash lawyers.” And they’re all hungry to get work. They probably go looking for cases like Dances-With-Drain-Cleaner in Atlanta and convince the boob that he can cash in on his idiocy.
My solution? Close down all law schools for about 20 years. We’ve got too many lawyers today, and adding to that number isn’t gonna help. Why don’t you lawyers-to-be become doctors, or pastry chefs, or perhaps quantum physicists?