'What's In A Name? - "Trial Lawyers" Alone for Justice?'
By Marion Edwyn Harrison (02/09/07)
Perhaps it is true, with apologies to the Immortal Bard, to whom the line is attributed: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet . . ." If so, the message at times may be ripe for antonymic application.
Judging by the language of commercial advertising and “politics-speak” over many years, it is clear that a name or slogan as originally formulated sometimes attracts unwanted repute. The almost invariable reaction: Change the name or slogan.
Thus, the salubrious sound of “free trade” began as “resale price maintenance.” “Inheritance taxes” to those who oppose them became “death taxes.” Uniquely and tragically, “abortion” became, at least to its proponents, “pro-choice.” The wordsmith granddaddy of them all may be “life insurance” which, to be sure, neither assures nor ensures a life but pays a benefit to somebody other than the deceased when the insured dies.
So much for amateur philology. The latest verbal recreation is that of the gigantic and, unfortunately highly successful, lobby for, and association of, so-called “trial lawyers” - that is, the contingency-fee bar which has wreaked such havoc upon business, hospitals, physicians and other victims, increasing costs to huge numbers of citizens as unnamed victims and reducing income to business, hospitals, physicians and others as named victims.
The semantic evolution in the quest for respectability reveals a good bit:
1947 National Association of Claimants’ Compensation Attorneys
1960 National Association of Claimants’ Counsel of America
1964 American Trial Lawyers Association
1972 Association of Trial Lawyers of America
2006 American Association for Justice
Wow! How masterful! Businesses, hospitals, physicians and other litigation victims, as well as their attorneys, are all in favor of injustice!
Whatever its altruistic and beguiling name, the American Association for Justice (“AAJ”) is big-time. In 2005 alone AAJ spent some $ 7.2 million. That is considerably less than business interests spent but AAJ’s expenditures are more single-purpose: juries generous with other people’s money, big awards, commensurately large plaintiffs’ attorneys (almost entirely contingent) fees.
Free Congress Foundation from time to time has addressed, and continues to address, this overall subject, including its forum on April 10, 2004, in the Senate Dirksen Office Building, keynoted by Kentucky’s Senator A. Mitchell (Mitch) McConnell, Jr., now Senate Minority Leader. President George W. Bush also has attempted to infuse some reasonableness and fairness into the system, including his support for, and signing of, the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, in February 2005.
The bulk of the problem, of course, lies in the States and their courts. However, one must be alert as to what, if anything, the newly organized 110th Congress may attempt. However beguiling the name of the organization, the AAJ, similar organizations in the States and great numbers of affluent and politically hep plaintiffs’ contingency-fee lawyers know how to organize and how to politick. (Maybe Presidential candidate John Edwards, having amazed tens of millions of dollars in such fees, is an exemplar.)
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.
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