# Trial Lawyers, Edwards, and "Helping the Downtrodden" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 7, 2007, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203 "2007-02-07T14:16:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Gadarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/21 "2007-02-07T17:13:14Z")
> [@](#): > > This is fine when the corporation is actually malignant, (and they are sometimes) but there are plenty of times when the corporation is just trying to do business the best way they can, and something goes wrong. There’s a difference between malignance and negligence. Both can, in certain circumstances, appropriately make a company liable to civil suit. Do you disagree? ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/22 "2007-02-07T17:16:27Z")
[QUOTE=Cheesesteak] This is fine when the corporation is actually malignant, (and they are sometimes) but there are plenty of times when the corporation is just trying to do business the best way they can, and something goes wrong. Those corporations have to spend just as much on their own lawyers and insurance to avoid getting hurt by a suit. [/QUOTE] Well, what I said was “unreasonably dangerous” which is different from malignant (which would probably lead to criminal charges). In negligence cases, a corporation has behaved unreasonably in almost every case. It is rarely if ever true that a corporation is just behaving reasonably and something goes wrong. If such a case won, it would be because of a mistake at trial. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/23 "2007-02-07T17:20:51Z")
[QUOTE=Gadarene] I think that’s an intuitive and uncontroversial conclusion, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who disagrees with you. The meat, of course, is in the part of your sentence that you hand-wave away: that is, the legitimacy of the lawsuit and the legitimacy of the verdict. (Quite different things, of course.) [/QUOTE] I’m not trying to hand-wave it away, I am just trying to point out that these other effects are not taken into account when someone like Edwards is called a “champion of the downtrodden.” He may help one group of people, but at the expense of another, and that doesn’t seem to be considered. Also, I didn’t want to comment on the legitimacy of this particular case because that wasn’t the point of my post. The point of my post is that whether the verdict is legitimate or not, these effects still take place. In some cases, I’m sure the verdicts are completely fair. In others, I’ll bet they are not. But either way, there are people who are negatively affected, and this is not considered in the outcome. ---
**Author:** ![Gadarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/24 "2007-02-07T17:42:17Z")
> [@](#): > > But either way, there are people who are negatively affected, and this is not considered in the outcome. Which is true of every result ever in the legal, political, and economic sphere. I completely agree with you. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/25 "2007-02-07T17:50:03Z")
[QUOTE=Gadarene] Which is true of every result ever in the legal, political, and economic sphere. I completely agree with you. 🙂 [/QUOTE] All I’m saying is that I wouldn’t necessarily call someone a “champion of the downtrodden,” when that championing is putting a lot of other downtrodden folks out of a job. I’m not saying what he does is wrong, by any means…what I actually think is that it’s morally neutral. He is doing his job, he is helping some people through it, and doing harm to others through it. Maybe it all evens out, but I wouldn’t call him a champion of the downtrodden. ---
**Author:** ![Gadarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/26 "2007-02-07T17:55:36Z")
Nor do I call him a champion of the downtrodden. We agree again. 🙂 But by your criteria, _nobody_ is a champion of the downtrodden, because their actions always have unseen (or unforeseen) consequences somewhere else. Right? ---
**Author:** ![According\_to\_Pliny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@According\_to\_Pliny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/According_to_Pliny)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/27 "2007-02-07T18:07:18Z")
Aren’t about half of all senators and congressmen lawyers? ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/28 "2007-02-07T18:09:48Z")
[QUOTE=Gadarene] Nor do I call him a champion of the downtrodden. We agree again. 🙂 But by your criteria, _nobody_ is a champion of the downtrodden, because their actions always have unseen (or unforeseen) consequences somewhere else. Right? [/QUOTE] Well, it depends of the scale of the consequences, and who is being harmed. If I were harmed by losing my job, for example, I probably would not have too much trouble finding another. I live in a large city in which my industry is very active. But when factories shut down in small towns, I think that is a _serious_ consequence that should not be turned a blind eye to. My point was more that the people who were being harmed may very well have been put in more dire straits than the people who were awarded the settlement ever were. P.S. I wasn’t claiming that _you_ would call trial lawyers a “champions of the downtrodden,” but wasn’t that the subject of the OP? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/29 "2007-02-07T18:12:57Z")
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena] Well, it depends of the scale of the consequences, and who is being harmed. If I were harmed by losing my job, for example, I probably would not have too much trouble finding another. I live in a large city in which my industry is very active. But when factories shut down in small towns, I think that is a _serious_ consequence that should not be turned a blind eye to. My point was more that the people who were being harmed may very well have been put in more dire straits than the people who were awarded the settlement ever were. [/QUOTE] I promise you that no damage award seriously hurts a corporation unless the injury involved was more devastating than the dire straights you’re put into if your corporation shuts down. More importantly, by your principle, we should never severely punish corporations. I think that’s a bad principle. I also think that people like Gandhi and MLK Jr. “helped the downtrodden” despite the negative impact their movements had on some businesses. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/30 "2007-02-07T18:13:02Z")
[QUOTE=Gadarene] There’s a difference between malignance and negligence. Both can, in certain circumstances, appropriately make a company liable to civil suit. Do you disagree? [/QUOTE] Maybe I chose a lousy word to explain my thought. Some companies take actions that they know (or should reasonably know) are hazardous, and take no steps to mitigate the danger. Other companies just do business the best way that they can. Both companies have to pay for extra insurance and lawyers because of the threat of tort, and both companies can lose a lot of money in a suit. This lost money doesn’t have to doom the economy for us to recognize that it isn’t just “helping the poor”. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/31 "2007-02-07T18:14:03Z")
[QUOTE=According to Pliny] Aren’t about half of all senators and congressmen lawyers? [/QUOTE] There’s a lot of them in there. But nowhere near as many trial lawyers, I assume. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/32 "2007-02-07T18:15:28Z")
[QUOTE=Cheesesteak] Maybe I chose a lousy word to explain my thought. Some companies take actions that they know (or should reasonably know) are hazardous, and take no steps to mitigate the danger. Other companies just do business the best way that they can. Both companies have to pay for extra insurance and lawyers because of the threat of tort, and both companies can lose a lot of money in a suit. This lost money doesn’t have to doom the economy for us to recognize that it isn’t just “helping the poor”. [/QUOTE] What is the alternative? Never hurt a corporation? And I will point out again that a corporation will only lose a negligence suit if they do not take reasonable care. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/33 "2007-02-07T18:17:38Z")
[QUOTE=Cheesesteak] Other companies just do business the best way that they can. [/QUOTE] What does this mean? I can manufacture a car “the best way I can” and it will be an utter death trap. I have a responsibility not to be negligent. My own incompetence isn’t an excuse. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/34 "2007-02-07T18:24:02Z")
[QUOTE=Richard Parker] I promise you that no damage award seriously hurts a corporation unless the injury involved was more devastating than the dire straights you’re put into if your corporation shuts down. [/QUOTE] You’ve never been in a class action lawsuit, have you? I was in one where Whirlpool wound up paying $8M because a recall meant some people didn’t get to use their microwave for a while, even though Whirlpool offered to buy them a new microwave to use until the repair team could be scheduled. I guess I should be thankful the lawyers championed our cause for only $2.3M, so that I could be offered $7.50 for my personal pain and suffering. This was a company that did the best they could to build a quality product, and fix the problem that they didn’t catch in design, they still got sued and had to pay millions on lawyers and itty bitty checks instead of putting it into their business. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/35 "2007-02-07T18:25:19Z")
[QUOTE=Richard Parker] I promise you that no damage award seriously hurts a corporation unless the injury involved was more devastating than the dire straights you’re put into if your corporation shuts down. [/QUOTE] Look into the Dow Corning case, sometime, as one example. The company was put into bankruptcy protection for something like 10 years. I would consider that serious harm to the company. I don’t know how many jobs were lost, but I’ll bet it was considerable. And no one ever proved that those implants were harmful (aren’t they back on the market now?) > [@](#): > > More importantly, by your principle, we should never severely punish corporations. I think that’s a bad principle. I also think that people like Gandhi and MLK Jr. “helped the downtrodden” despite the negative impact their movements had on some businesses. That’s not what I’m saying at all. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/36 "2007-02-07T18:39:06Z")
[QUOTE=Cheesesteak] You’ve never been in a class action lawsuit, have you? I was in one where Whirlpool wound up paying $8M because a recall meant some people didn’t get to use their microwave for a while, even though Whirlpool offered to buy them a new microwave to use until the repair team could be scheduled. I guess I should be thankful the lawyers championed our cause for only $2.3M, so that I could be offered $7.50 for my personal pain and suffering. This was a company that did the best they could to build a quality product, and fix the problem that they didn’t catch in design, they still got sued and had to pay millions on lawyers and itty bitty checks instead of putting it into their business. [/QUOTE] I’ve never been on the receiving end a suit, but I have been a member of a class. What was the name of the case? It’s hard for me to refute your characterization without any facts of the case. Class actions of the kind you describe don’t get certified (you know they have to get certified by an independent judge, right?) unless actual injury (non-economic) has been done to real people. What was the damage in this case? You should also know that all settlement offers are overseen by a judge, so if the case wasn’t settled there was probably a good reason. If your complaint is over the disparity between your award and the lawyer’s pay, I think you misunderstand the role of class actions. The reason someone would sue as a class (instead of as an individual) is precisely because the individual suit wouldn’t get enough damages to make it worthwhile. You had the choice to opt-out, and presumably you did not for some reason. Class actions provide a tool for punishing corporations that misbehave where otherwise there would be no suit. Finally, the unrefuted points I made earlier about contingent fees apply here as well. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/37 "2007-02-07T18:40:26Z")
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena] That’s not what I’m saying at all. [/QUOTE] No, but it is the logical implication of what you’re saying. You can’t have it both ways. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/38 "2007-02-07T18:46:49Z")
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena] Look into the Dow Corning case, sometime, as one example. The company was put into bankruptcy protection for something like 10 years. I would consider that serious harm to the company. I don’t know how many jobs were lost, but I’ll bet it was considerable. And no one ever proved that those implants were harmful (aren’t they back on the market now?) [/QUOTE] Oh, and I don’t think this case is a very good example for your argument. The implants were found to be harmful (though we later discovered they were less harmful than previously thought), and Dow continued to manufacture them after they knew they were harmful. The devices now on the market are primarily a different silicone technology. See: [Breast implant - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_implant). ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/39 "2007-02-07T18:51:11Z")
[QUOTE=Richard Parker] No, but it is the logical implication of what you’re saying. You can’t have it both ways. [/QUOTE] No, it isn’t. I am saying that, while I think in some cases, corporations do need to be punished, it does not necessarily make their punishers heroes. That’s all. Some may be, some may not be, but I would consider the case of a trial lawyer who tries court cases to be morally neutral. I am not saying they are scum, but I am not saying they are heroes, either. > [@](#): > > Oh, and I don’t think this case is a very good example for your argument. The implants were found to be harmful, and Dow continued to manufacture them after they knew this. The devices now on the market are a different silicone technology. See: [Breast implant - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_implant). I find the evidence for the harm to be weak at best. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2007, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203/40 "2007-02-07T18:53:52Z")
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena] No, it isn’t. I am saying that, while I think in some cases, corporations do need to be punished, it does not necessarily make their punishers heroes. That’s all. Some may be, some may not be, but I would consider the case of a trial lawyer who tries court cases to be morally neutral. I am not saying they are scum, but I am not saying they are heroes, either. [/quote] Fine. But objectively Edwards has helped lots of poor people in his trial work. So in order to counter that, you claim that he also hurt lots of people as an unseen consequence. That exact same logic applies to MLK Jr. and others. > [@Sarahfeena](#): > > I find the evidence for the harm to be weak at best. But the point is that all the medical evidence at the time pointed to a high harm and Dow ignored it. And although the harm was lower than thought at the time, real people were hurt by Dow’s decision. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trial-lawyers-edwards-and-helping-the-downtrodden/391203.md?page=3)