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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (341298)	6/25/2007 11:18:42 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1578331

Dry cleaner wins missing pants case Good. Also good is - "Bartnoff ordered Pearson to pay the court costs of defendants Soo Chung, Jin Nam Chung and Ki Y. Chung." --- From an opinion piece written before the final result - "...• Phrases like "Do you realize I'm a lawyer?" uttered in the course of routine disputes with storekeepers, neighbors, school principals, etc., probably account for more of the legal profession's aggregate unpopularity than any number of scandals in the actual representation of clients. • David and Goliath talk notwithstanding, legal action is often a powerful dis-equalizer of the playing field, as those who know how to work the system fleece the outsiders, the novices, the distracted and the trustful. ... • The other source of Mr. Pearson's power--his ability to hold the threat of huge penalties over the Chungs' heads--arises from consumer laws that encourage complainants to multiply the stated penalty for a single infraction by the whole universe of a business's clientele, or by all the days in the calendar, with no need to prove actual injury. This sort of mechanical damage-multiplication has been a key engine in shakedown scandals in California (where roving complainants have mass-mailed demand letters to small businesses over technical infractions); in "junk-fax" litigation demanding billions from hapless merchants in Texas, Illinois and elsewhere; and in important sectors of litigation aimed at bigger businesses, including claims against credit-card providers and purveyors of "light" cigarettes. Whole dockets'-worth of opportunistic litigation would dry up if we revised these laws so as to require a showing of actual injury. Doing so would require overcoming epic resistance from the litigation lobby... opinionjournal.com