Ian, if you want to change the subject to whether we should trust "for profit" personal injury attorneys to act in the public good, then you should have said so in the beginning. Of course we shouldn't.
As for the opinions of article writers representing those with a "for profit" agenda who make blanket conclusions, should we trust them? Why would we?
For instance; Cerebral palsy has now been shown to be secondary to birth trauma in less than 10% of cases, and it is likely that John Edwards was well aware of the fact that it is almost never a result of physician error when he was trying cases against doctors, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped him, does it?
That old statistical "10%" trick works nearly every time. For instance, the odds that you and I would one day be corresponding with each other are probably millions to one at birth. So anyone that says we are must be lying. Or wait, we are corresponding.
And maybe Edwards was skilled enough and had enough expert help to distinguish the minority of cases where the palsy was not only due to birth trauma, but also a result of the physician's failure to meet the standard of medicine required in his specialty. I think you'll agree that many of us make a living by using our brains and judgement to make choices that increase the odds in our favor. I assume that he did as well.
So maybe the sentence should have read; "in an area of medicine where only 10% of palsy cases are traumatically induced, Edwards had the expertise to recognize such cases and he developed the talent and skill to successfully prosecute them."
As for the statement that; "But he screened his cases to the point that he only helped people that were going to make him richer," what was your point? Did you expect him to take losing cases that would waste his time, his money and put his clients through years of a lawsuit with nothing to show for it? Is that your idea of how to "help the little guy?" I don't understand.
We should be careful not to let our deeply ingrained and carefully fostered ill will towards attorneys who represent injured people interfere with our ability to critically analyze complicated issues. |
