During his career of allegedly championing the helpless, Edwards took no pro bono cases. Maybe Balko could add this to his list of questions for Edwards.

I forgot to mention that I was disagreeing with one interpretation of your statement but, at the time, wasn’t sure I was really disagreeing with what you meant (does that make sense?).

I hope that things will become less partisan after the election (or before, but that’s unlikely). There is so much energy going into partisan sniping that could be put into finding solutions.

Well written. To clarify, I never stated anything was perfect. I was just against broad sweeping generalizations. Nothing is perfect and we should always look to make things better. Unfortunately, people have become so partisan that they tend to quickly agree with broad statements without questioning. I think the buzzword is “groupthink”. Mentioned in a certain report….but I am not getting into that. The partisan dogs will come in so quick….

On non-capitalist countries that have lawyers, a good example is China (which is a long way from being capitalist, although they’re flirting with it on the edges). Many Chinese will tell you that their system is just like ours, since there is a judge and lawyers for each side. But there are a few differences in what the defense lawyer can do: the lawyer for the accused cannot call witnesses, question prosecution witnesses, or meet with the defendant before or during the trial. The only role of the defense lawyer is to plead for clemency during the sentencing phase. This is for criminal, not civil, trials, but certainly the odds are not in the favor of anyone suing the government or local power (and most big companies are still owned by the government, one way or another).

But, Bryan, I have to disagree with this statement:
“BTW, it is hypocritical for any capitalist to say who has the right and proper way of making money. period.”

Or maybe I would just try to correct it, to: capitalists shouldn’t argue with any legal way to make money. If they disagree with a legal approach, then they should think of how to change the system. My view of capitalism is that it’s an incentive system to encourage people to create wealth for society. If people create wealth, they’ll get to keep a certain percentage of it (whereas communism relies entirely on the stick, with no carrot: create wealth, or we’ll kill you and perhaps your children).

Capitalism works beautifully for everyone, and is “fair” by most reasonable definitions, IF people are acquiring wealth by creating it through their physical labor, ideas or whatever. The wealth is shared (but those that created it keep a disproportionate share), and everyone is better off except those obsessed with the “income gap”, to the exclusion of all else.

The key problem is that some will try to simply steal the wealth rather than create it. If too much of this corruption is allowed, the system becomes less efficient and less fair (i.e. it starts to resemble communism, from a practical standpoint).

So, to make capitalism work, regulators need to try to set up the rules to encourage wealth creation while discouraging corruption and theft. Unfortunately, it’s hard to draw the line perfectly, and there tend to be trade-offs. The legal system faces the same trade-offs – the ability to sue in cases of legitimate malpractice is a crucial protection that we all need, whereas constant lawsuits due to baseless claims hurt everyone (especially innocent doctors). I tend to feel that insurance companies should be helping the system to work better by basing insurance rates on the legitimacy of claims (also not a perfect system, but more efficient than taking all claims at face value and settling, regardless of the merit).

Back to Edwards – trial lawyers are legal, and some play an important and productive role in society, but it’s fair to ask what his career choices say about his personality, integrity, etc.

I totally agree with Samer that this is the best country in the world. Living in Asia helped me to appreciate what we have here. The U.S. is the best partly because so many Americans keep working to make it better, by criticising the weak points in our system and looking for alternatives.

“Mr. Edwards, you’ve had to endure much slanderous innuendo about how you’ve made your personal fortune in a rather unpopular industry. There have been claims that your natural sympathy towards this industry could cause you to unduly influence government regulation in order to benefit yourself and your colleagues. Your ties to a corporation(indeed you are chief executive officer of one)in this industry support these fears.

Yet so far not a single charge has ever been proven against you. Knowing what you know now about national politics and the elections process, DO YOU HAVE ANY COMMENTS ABOUT THESE KINDS OF CHARGES BEING LEVELLED AGAINST DICK CHENEY AND WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO HIS ACCUSERS?

It’s no accident that conservatives will take the business side and progressives will take the tort side considerinng the candidates respective backgrounds.

We don’t like to admit our own bias, but it is everywhere and with everyone. Although many would deny it, if the professions were reversed but party affiliation were the same, you would likely have a different convenient opinion.

The whole concept of who is more important in a capitalistic society, capitalists or lawyers.. Seems a bit immature to me. What difference does it make to the substance of the discussion who is MORE important? They are BOTH important. If it is important to you that business men are more necessary than consumer advocates… fine.

But to the trial lawyer haters, I’d ask a question. (but I don’t expect an answer). If your wife or kids were killed in an automobile accident due to a faulty seatbelt that was installed by a car company cutting corners, would you want the VERY best lawyer money could buy? What would be the price that you’d consider a fair trade? Their greedy negligence cost you your family. What? A thousand dollars? 100 thousand? a million? No amount of money will replace your family. The sky is the limit. If they are going to be so greedy as to risk my families life, I have NO sympathy for that company. Talk to people who have NEEDED and USED trial lawyers for legitimate purposes and your perspective changes in a hurry.

I take it you are the authority on trial lawyers. I am not standing up for them, I am just against sweeping generalizations based on perception rather than cold hard facts.

Point me to a website that did a scientific study of trial lawyers where it is found that the majority of trial lawyers “go out and sue companies and pleople regardles of the fact that there is usually evidence that there was no neglect”

Don’t give me obvious examples, look at the whole. Statistically.

Where did I say this? I didn’t even imply it. Talk about going off topic.

Banter all you want about the evils of trial lawyers, all I am saying is that you cannot say they represent everything against what capitalism means.

I will even state this just so you can calm down: Most business’ are solid business’ that work for the betterment of society and themselves. Just like most trial lawyers work for the betterment of society and themselves.

You appear very fidgety and quick to defend the capitalist system. You can calm down because I like it,as does most Americans. There is nothing wrong with making money. Now that is where my point is, capitalism is about making money, whether you are a trial lawyer or industrialist you are delivering your services for personal gain and to the continued betterment of society.

If you want to split hairs about who “steals money”, you are just revealing how partisan you have become. Both sides earn their money in legal ways, and some, and I will stress a minority, f*ck people over.

BTW, it is hypocritical for any capitalist to say who has the right and proper way of making money. period.

This kind of like democracy and why we have civil rights. It is hypocritical for a democratic society to say only a certain section of our citizens have the right to vote.

You simply don’t think trial lawyers earn their money fairly simply because you don’t like them. And most likely this has been stoked, by the appointment of Edwards, in opposition to your candidate. Fine. Get over it.

I didn’t think so. You claim that trial lawyers, presumably civil trial lawyers, are a necessary facet of capitalism. That’s assuming more parallelism exists than actually does.

First, you are operating on a false assumption that businesses are solely out to screw people. That’s not the case. Successful businesses give their customers what they want at a price they are happy with. If there were no civil courts, businesses would not suddenly unleash their wrath on their customers and employees. A business still has to convince people to buy their products and employees to work for them. If the civil courts suddenly vanished, you’d still have criminal courts and the marketplace to keep businesses honest. It just might not mean every problem results in huge payments from the business to the injured party. I don’t want to argue the morality of the traditional pay the victim fix, just that there are other possible ways to stop companies from doing bad business.

Second you make an attempt to equate the business of litigation as equal to that of capitalist business by saying that it only exists where capitalism flourishes. But lions and tigers only exist where there are lots of tasty animals to eat. Two simple questions:

Could litigation exist in a world without business making profits?

Could business making profits exist in a world without litigators?

It’s not parallel. Argue it any way you want, you need them more than they need you.

The unfortunate thing is that we have become so partisan that if you are a Bush Supporter, you are now against Trial lawyers, they are evil and the scum of the earth. But just like Ken said, you get screwed, who is going to help you.

BTW, what non-capitalist country has trial lawyers? North Korea and Cuba don’t have them. SInce business is controlled by the state and you can’t sue the state, you are pretty much sh*t out of luck. To say trial lawyers is against capitalists/capitalism ignores that they are a necessary product of capitalism, Pinbot.

Sorry for the long post. My first here. I promise to try and keep it pithy next time.

You know that our system is broke when most cases do not go to trial just b/c of the cost. All that means is that lawyers making the law have created a system to blackmail the rest of america.

But do not take it the wrong way. irespective of what is wrong with our system. it is by far the best country in the world.

Just out of curiosity, would a capitalist view dumping known carcinogens into your drinking water as a superior way to make a fortune? Or how about cutting corners on components of automobile seats, or large consumer appliances? After all, just because there are several thousand instances of automobile and appliance manufacturers concerned more with the bottom line than the safety of the purchasers of their inferior products, doesn’t take away from their ability to enrich their shareholders with money drenched with the blood of those they have harmed. But then again, they willingly recall faulty products already, without the prodding of the NHTSA or the CPSC, right?

I’m just wondering, how did people come across their hatred for trial lawyers, when they’ll let polluters and manufacturers of faulty products slide?