LINE THE LAWYERS UP AGAINST THE WALL

This will be a short missive. I read in the paper today that Bush is putting together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats to push his tort reform through congress. Of course his tort reform is woefully inadequate and entirely too complicated. All of the problems created by lawyers in this country can be solved by enacting two simple laws.

The first would require that the loser in any legal action (be it civil or criminal) would automatically be required to pay all expenses incurred by the winning side. This is commonly refered to as "loser pays."

The law might need to go beyond this and require that before bringing a law suit the lawyer bringing the law suit would need to assure that either he or his client has posted a bond sufficient to cover the costs if they lose.

The second simple law would address the problem of lawyers reaping huge payouts in class action suits while the plantiffs get virtually nothing. Basically the new law would state that the defense team (i.e. ALL lawyers together who are involved in bringing the suit) could not recieve more than the least amount paid to any single member of the class.

There it is. Problem solved. Of course we would probably have to placate the liberal bleeding hearts and implement some sort of employment re-training program for all of the out of work lawyers but that would be a small price to pay.

Like most good, simple solutions to societies problems it relies on the members of congress who are mostly lawyers themselves deciding to pass laws that would ultimately be detrimental to their personal well being, so it will never happen.