Is It Irresponsibility or Litigation?

The moment I heard the screeching tires I instinctively looked over to ensure my three year old daughter was out of danger and that I was between her and the road. I then watched as a sleek black sedan cut around our corner, wheels sliding and contorted. As the car sped by at 50 miles an hour on our residential 20 mile an hour street, I peered in at the teenage couple who appeared oblivious to my presence. After making the loop in our neighborhood the black sedan made its way back towards me. Hoping I’d be respected, I stepped into the road and waived at the teenagers to stop. The car slowed and stopped at my side. "Please slow down we have kids in this area," I stated as nicely as possible while pointing at my daughter. "Sorry," the teenage girl stated from behind the wheel, "I just got my license and need to go fast and have a little fun."

As an attorney her statement unnerved me. It was a paradigm of our age. Our society is not litigious, it’s irresponsible. In its irresponsibility it wants to blame us attorneys for the expense, time, misery and penitence it must go through as a result. It wants guiltless-no-expense-clean-ups of its messes. I’ve been in divorces in which both spouses jump into a pile of manure and start flinging it at each other. When the manure flinging reaches a dangerous level they then call in their respective attorneys and ask them to: clean them up, referee the manure slinging, act as a human shield against incoming manure, flatter them that their manure is the cleanest and most smartly flung, and then join in the manure slinging so as to overwhelm their spouse. At the end of this manure tirade, even after their attorney had suggested a different course, they often look back in amazement to find they’re naked, drowning in manure and are perplexed that their attorneys expect to be paid for cleaning them off.

I’ve litigated and won $10,000 cases against corporations that have hired dozens of attorneys and spent over $100,000 because the stakes were low. We attorneys are expected to be Gods, when only government prosecutors and judges have that luxury. (When was the last time you heard a Judge or a Prosecutor admit that they made a wrong decision or perhaps someone was wrongfully tried and made bankrupt as a result)? I’ve learned early in my career that to take a reasonable approach or to seek a consensus early in a case only invited the opposing counsel to be more unreasonable in their demands. I’ve learned that it is government and powerful industries that most often take advantage of loopholes and technicalities that were created in the guise of legal reform. Usually, this means screwing the blue collar worker and their attorneys. When’s the last time you heard of congress or your legislator trying to limit the attorneys fees and wages of insurance defense counsels, and corporate lawyers?

This fall I was asked by a pre-school to sign a waiver that stated that I would not sue them if they sexually molested, physically abused, accidently poured boiling hot water on, pushed down the stairs or accidently ran over my child. I did not sign it nor should you. I then went to my doctors and was asked to sign a waiver that meant that I would not sue if my doctor operated on me while drunk and accidently cut my leg off instead of removing my appendix. Based upon these experiences, it is my conclusion that we are not litigious, we are irresponsible.

Hence, I have an offer to make the general public: if you will sign and return to me the following waiver I will promise not to sue them.

I hereby agree to waive any and all legal rights to sue Mr.
Lambert for any harm, damage, injury or other problem he causes
me.

____________________
(Name)
____________________
(Date)

Loren M. Lambert
1998 ©