Mark & Juanita wrote in
:

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

agreed, but you should (and I realize we're talking about lawyers here)
exercise some judgement in accepting cases. After all you only have so much
time to spend.


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?

Absolutely, and it's not as unusual as it seems. I am not a lawyer,
but I am married to someone who is both a medical and legal professional.
She is employed by a law firm to evaluate the medical claims made by both
actual, and potential clients. They frequently, based on her analysis,
decline to accept clients based on the lack of merit of their cases.
Remember that these cases are typically taken on contingency. The attorney
has a reasonable expectation of recovery so he takes the risk. If he has no
reasonable expectation of recovery then he's just losing money for no good
reason.

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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