Stop Throwing Tomatoes at Plaintiff Bar

The downside of the tort-reform movement, as least for intelligent card-carrying members like myself, is the pressure to demonize. 

The classic example of that is that all plaintiff lawyers are greedy, self-seeking, and maybe, like Dickie S and Bill L, crooked.  I realized this two years ago when I left my card home and went on the Internet to defend Bill Marler of Marler Clark, a Seattle law firm which specializes in food-borne diseases.  He was being attacked for his digital genius.  Color this green - as in envy.  

Marler saw the potential of the web and got his blogs going and going and going long before his own competitors.  Meanwhile, defense attorneys haven't caught up with the plaintiff bar in general in digital outreach.  Too many prominent defense attorneys seem to be still sending off windy papers on public nuisance to print law journals that get dusty on the shelves of courthouse libraries [yeah, like the one in downtown Providence, Rhode Island where Claus von Bulow was acquitted and the lead paint defendants convicted.]

Well, now color Marler red, as in rotten tomatoes.  We all know about the salmonella contamination of tomatoes.  No red in my salad yesterday or today.  Since I'm in one of the vulnerable groups [a geezer] I could have croaked had I eaten a salmonella-tainted tomato.  I almost died from food poisoning when I was in my 20s.  It's scary, painful, and the recovery is slow.

Marler's approach to the safety breakdown in the food supply chain is to crusade to prevent:

• Contaminated tomatoes from entering the food supply and if they do to have a high-tech traceability system [like Fed Ex's] to ensure fast recall, and
• The contamination from happening in the first place.

You can read all about that and more in his recent testimony in Washington D.C. Download TestimonyEnergy.doc.

Well, today, he and other plaintiff attorneys specializing in food poisoning are being hung on the cross by diverse factions in tort reform.  Here and here are examples.  Marler frequently exhibits his stigmata to me when I assist Marler Clark with digital editing [Disclosure of that commercial relationship].

The reality is much less simple.  In our litigious society, one way to scare a miscreant into following safety procedures in food production, processing, shipping, and shelving is to stand ready to sue.  It works.  Remember how the meat industry cleaned up its act, literally, after the Jack-in-the-Box E-Coli contamination? Lawsuits sure helped with that.  And don't count out public shaming, which is what plaintiff lawyers excel at.

There's more.  Demonizing the entire plaintiff bar deep-sixes the tort-reform movement's credibility. Plaintiff attorneys are a key function in our system of checks and balances.  Incidentally, I am even coming to the point of view that contingency arrangements, if structured properly [the ones in the RI lead paint trial I & II weren't though], have a role in balancing the public interest against anybody and any institution which can or does harm it.

Comments

[trademark law]

I think this blog is very good as always happy to go

[trademark law]

I think this blog is very good as always happy to go