The Reputation of Personal Injury Lawyers – Aronberg & Aronberg

For as long as law has been a profession, and not just a means by which to regulate a civil society, lawyers have been unceremoniously tainted with shades of greed and a Machiavellian, “the ends justify the means” approach to life.  People scoff at lawsuits and often call them “frivolous” or “get-rich-quick schemes” in an effort to diminish the good work that lawyers do in attempting to protect and preserve the rights and liberties afforded to people in the United States (in this case). So, who exactly are the ones behind the mammoth effort to hinder the work of personal injury lawyers in particular? The biggest proponents of “tort reform,” as it charitably referred to, are big businesses that suffer financial losses due to civil suits orchestrated by personal injury lawyers.

Big businesses try to smear personal injury lawyers as “ambulance chasers” who turn a broken fingernail into a life and death situation in an effort to sue for millions.  Such a preposterous lawsuit would indeed be frivolous, but those types of lawsuits are far and few between and in no way represent the entirety of the work done by personal injury lawyers.  The work that personal injury lawyers do revolves around the notion of helping people seek the justice they deserve.  Today’s society is so riddled with legalese, regulations and standard procedure that, unfortunately, it truly does take a skilled personal injury lawyer to seek compensation for damages and go to trial if need be.

Tort reformers try to set caps on damages that can be awarded, in addition to a slew of other debilitating regulations on the legal industry.  These “reforms” would be good for big business and bad for consumers.  Big business would benefit by not having to pay out and take responsibility for defective products, etc., and consumers would suffer because they would lose their recourse should they be injured.  This whole idea of “tough luck” is unfair.  If somebody does something to hurt you, shouldn’t you be able to seek compensation to cover medical costs and other expenses related to the injury that wasn’t your fault? Isn’t that what insurance companies are for? Isn’t that why companies charge ridiculous amounts of moneys, so that they can, in part, pay for legal representation should they need it?

Recently, America’s largest plastic gas container manufacturing companies closed their doors after approximately half a century in business. The company said that the reason they’re being forced to close-up shop is product liability litigation. It is true that they have faced product liability litigation, but only because more than 75 people were terribly burned by their gas cans!  The company could have installed a small flame arrestor which would have cost them under $1, and would have prevented the burns, but the company chose not to—even when most other gas can manufacturers use the small arrestor. So, the company knowingly didn’t include a safety mechanism in their product, and then blamed lawyers when their customers asked for compensation for the damages they suffered because of the gas cans.

Lawyers have been used as a scapegoat for years.  A while ago they were chastised and ridiculed in the fallout of the McDonald’s hot coffee case. People lambasted lawyers and the plaintiff with questions such as “why wouldn’t coffee be hot?” and so on and so forth. The fact is, no coffee should have been as hot as McDonald’s was serving it, and no manufacturer of plastic gas cans should choose not to include a safety device.

If companies want to disregard the safety of their customers, that’s their problem—but personal injury lawyers won’t follow suit. If you have been injured at the hands of another individual or company, please contact us at 561-266-9191 or email us at daronberg@build.simple.biz.

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