Saturday, July 24, 2010

Too Expensive

I've heard it for years, but only recently have I come to understand it myself; litigation is too expensive. Way too expensive. Counter-productively expensive. Ruinously expensive. Inexcusably expensive. Unjustly expensive.

Attorneys and the judges who hear their cases should be paid for a valuable service, no more no less, but that is not what is happening now. Litigation has become expensive because, at bottom, everyone's trying to pass the buck, and to those to whom the buck is passed, each of them is out to make a buck.

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2 comments:

Ski Coach said...

I love the quotation from Thoreau!

I live in France but have family in the UK. My entire inheritance was stolen from me and I simply could not afford the litigation so could do absolutely nothing about it.

It's no accident that the word "privilege" means "private legislation". Justice and principle are of no value in Western culture - only money is of value. If you don't share this value then you either accept this situation or you declare war. Personally I have accepted it - because I'm a better man than those who exploit it and will not be dragged down to the same level - even if this means loss on my part.

Until Law is "made free" it will never have my confidence or respect. Law is what Hitler used to put 6 millions Jews in the grave - when it gets that bad then war is the only option. It's been that bad before and it will happen again.

Eric K. Johnson, Attorney at Law said...

Ian:

Thanks for your comment on my blog. I too loved the Thoreau quotation because it is so spot on. The West is quickly, though imperceptibly losing (if we have not lost already) a justice system, which is being replaced with a “conflict resolution” that values merely ending a conflict (who cares who was right or wrong) over a just resolution. Few care about what’s just and instead focus on the most expedient way to put a dispute “behind us.”

Your comments is correct on two counts: 1) not all injustices inflicted upon us require retribution. To forgive is still divine. 2) However, when the Hitlers (and those in his mold) of the world use law to inflict harm on an obscene scale, good men have no real alternative to war.

When the public realizes what the lawyers and judges have done, and see that those entrusted with the preservation and promotion of precious justice were the very ones that hypocritically poisoned it, there will be a revolt, and the lawyers and judges and legislators who allowed this contagion to spread will have no one to blame but themselves.

If you like the Thoreau quotation, you might also like this:

“To me, consensus seems to be: the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that need to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus’?”

Can you guess who said this?

Margaret Thatcher