On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:03:41 -0600, Secret Squirrel
wrote:

"J. Clarke" wrote in
:

Edwin Pawlowski wrote:


"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
Don't blame
Monster for this, blame the unholy mess that is the US legal system.

The suits are bad and wrong. But they're perfectly legal, and if you
don't have a court system that will reject them out of hand, them
Monster are just acting in a way that's being positively encouraged.

It may be legal, but no one is forcing them to do anything that is
immoral. It is not the system of laws encouraging them, it is
unethical lawyers out looking to make a buck, how matter how.

Is it "unethical lawyers" or an unethical business owner abusing the
legal system? The lawyer is not forcing him to bring the suits you
know.

I once discussed this with a lawyer who was in his cups at the time,
and he was really rather irate about the whole situation. Seems that
because lawyers used to be selective about their clients and deny
minorities their services, the courts ruled that a lawyer could be
disbarred for turning down a case for any reason other than that he
simply was too swamped with work to take on another one. So somebody
comes along and says "I want to sue McDonalds because I spilled my
coffee" the lawyer can try to talk them out of it but if they won't
talk out of it then the lawyer pretty much has to take the case, even
if he doesn't want to.


That simply isn't true. They, like all businesses, may not discriminate
based on race, gender, religion etc. However they certainly have the
right to decline a client for any legitimate reason. One perfectly
legitimate reason is that a case has no merit.


ah, but the opinion of "no merit" can be subjective. Thus, a person who
approaches a lawyer with some case and is told that it has no merit can
then go to another lawyer who will argue that the case *does* have merit
and that the first lawyer discriminated against the client and since the
client is a member of one of society's "specially protected" classes, thus
the original lawyer discriminated based upon r,g,r,etc. If you were a
lawyer knowing this scenario could occur, would you ever turn away a
client? Couple that with the fact that by shopping venues, you can pretty
much find a judge somewhere who will find for your client, there is a very
strong incentive to take cases and a very strong dis-incentive not to.

... although the thought of a lawyer sueing another lawyer does have some
appeal.




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Now we'll just use some glue to hold things in place until the brads dry

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