Bullied by Lawyers: Is It Safer to Just Settle?

April 9, 2008 — -- "We cannot use force."

That was my response last week when a lawyer shouted at me, "You media types are bullies, too!"

We were arguing about my Wall Street Journal op-ed that called class action and securities lawyers bullies and parasites, who enrich themselves through extortion. It's legal extortion, but extortion, nonetheless.

These aggressive lawyers and their Naderite defenders don't get it. Or they pretend they don't.

There are only two ways to do things in life: voluntarily or forced. We reporters may be obnoxious, intrusive, stupid, rude, etc., but we cannot force anyone to do anything. All our work is in the voluntary sector.

But litigation is force. When a plaintiff sues, a defendant is forced to mount a defense. If he settles or loses, he's forced to pay. Government is the enforcer.

Sometimes we need force — including the force behind the litigators — to protect our freedoms, just as we may need missiles. But we try not to use our missiles because we understand that they do tremendous collateral damage. But litigation does collateral damage, too. The millions spent on legal defense can't be used to make life-enhancing — and life-saving — products.

We ought to avoid using lawyers the way we avoid firing missiles.

But we don't. State attorneys general even hire them to pursue unpopular businesses, like gun makers. When the lawyers make a killing in the name of "protecting the people," they give a piece of that money to the attorney general's political campaign. Somehow that is not considered a scandal.

The businesses that pay may have done nothing wrong. Once an attorney has rounded up lots of complainants, it's not hard to terrorize companies into settling. They could fight and maybe win, but that distracts managers from what they ought to be doing. And they might get a bad jury and lose the entire company. It's safer to settle.

Our legal system invites lawyers to act like bullies. Only in America can I sue you for dubious reasons, force you to spend thousands of dollars on lawyers (not to mention the psychic costs — the anxiety and lost sleep that lawsuits create), and when a judge rules that my claim is bunk, I don't even have to say "sorry." I can blithely move on to sue someone else. In other countries, I would have to pay your legal fees to at least compensate you for some of the financial damage I caused. "Loser pays," it's called.