There are a lot of Dallas Texas Divorce Lawyer jokes going around, and that's fine. But there's a lot more venom in them lately, and lawyers are being blamed for a lot of the things that are wrong with society. And Texans are even considering changing their constitution, in the name of tort reform, with the expressed intent of keeping Dallas Texas lawyers from making money.
Well, it's time for me to weigh in and express my opinion.
Lawyers are seen as having glamorous jobs, and making a great deal of money. Well, some do, but most don't. Many criminal defense lawyers make less than $30,000 per year. The majority of lawyers just starting out from law school will make less than $50,000 per year.
Truth is, most Dallas Texas lawyers work very long hours and don't get paid nearly as well as you'd guess from the shows on television. They also put up with a great deal of BS to try to do the right thing for their clients.
It's easy to see a multimillion dollar verdict, find it unbelievable based on what came out in the newspaper, and blame the whole fiasco on the greedy lawyers. But blaming the greedy lawyers is the easy way out. If you think something's wrong with the system, it's easier to put a face on the system, and the Dallas Texas lawyer is a convenient scapegoat.
The truth is, very few divorce lawyers want to go to trial. It takes an enormous amount of preparation time, keeps you from doing other work during the trial, and you could lose and get nothing. Dallas Texas divorce lawyers prefer to settle their cases. If a case doesn't settle, it's usually for one of two reasons: greedy clients (defendants), or greedy clients (plaintiffs). One side won't give a reasonable amount, so everybody has to go to trial to get a judge or jury to decide. And when a plaintiff's divorce lawyer hits a jackpot, it's because the divorce lawyer convinced a jury of 12 folks that the defendant did something very bad and acted badly about it. A greedy Dallas Texas lawyer cannot convince his non-greedy client to go to trial. It takes a greedy client.
Every time a jury comes back with a huge verdict, the newspapers publish the simple, partial truth, as the reporter understands it, and everybody chuckles at those crazy juries. Now, I can't debunk every big verdict that ever came along, but there are probably web sites out there that do that. But let's take the Scalding Coffee From McDonald's case.
The newspaper reports were simple. Lady goes through drive-through at McDonald's and orders a coffee. It spills in her lap. She's hurt. She sues. Greedy lawyer gets her millions.
McDonald's knew the coffee was way too hot to drink, and was hot enough to cause very serious burns, but they served it anyway. Even after 700 people complained of serious burns, McDonalds continued to serve coffee that was way too hot. Irma Liebeck got scalded and underwent very painful medical treatments. She made a reasonable offer to settle ($20,000) and McDonald's told her to get lost. So they went to trial. At trial, the jury heard that McDonalds continued to serve scalding coffee even after hundreds of people were burned by it. The jury caught McDonalds lying when they said that people bought the coffee to take home and drink, but their market research showed people drank it in their cars. The jury believed that the actual cost to make things right financially with Liebeck was $200,000. But the lawyer said, (I'm guessing and paraphrasing here), "What will it take to get McDonald's to stop scalding people? Do you think $200,000 in damages will slow them down? Of course not. McDonald's sells $1.3 million in coffee every day. Give us a verdict big enough to make McDonalds stop burning people." The jury found the lawyer persuasive and awarded two days' worth of coffee revenue in damages to tell McDonalds to stop doing that. The judge said that McDonald's conduct was reckless, callous and willful. The actual damages were reduced from $200,000 to $160,000, and punitive damages were reduced to three times that amount, or $480,000. Knowing the facts, do you still think this was an example of a greedy lawyer? Or a lawyer doing the best he could to represent his client?
The kneejerk reaction to knowing just the fun facts about a case is that there are runaway juries or greedy Dallas Texas lawyers, or both. The insurance companies, who back the defendants in these cases, get behind these arguments and send the message that you can trust an insurance company, but you can't trust a jury, and you sure can't trust a lawyer. The insurance companies put together big ad campaigns for tort reform, saying that we need to squeeze out the greedy lawyers.
When I was in law school the Texas Legislature passed Worker's Compensation "Reform". Worker's Comp is the law that governs what happens when an employee is hurt while working for a company. There were three competing interests: insurance companies, doctors, and lawyers involved. But really, the Dallas Texas lawyers represented the interests of hurt employees, especially those who hadn't been hurt yet. The legislature decided one of the three parties at the table needed a whippin'. So, they chose the Texas lawyers. Easy choice. They effectively took away the right of an injured employee to sue if the employer wouldn't be fair about compensation. For years after I started practicing law I'd get calls from injured employees asking what they could do. Unfortunately, all I could tell them was to write their legislator.
Tort reform means you don't trust your neighbor, your fellow citizens, the jury of your peers, to give you justice if someone hurts you and won't do right.
© 2007 Civilized Divorce SM, 3131 Custer Rd Ste 255, Plano, TX 75075 972.881.1811. All rights reserved. Hal Davis Dallas Texas Divorce Lawyer