Lawyer-Wearing-Yarmulka
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Lawyers and the Rest of Us
I'm starting my second year of law school. I want to practice law. But the honest truth is that I hate all sorts of lawyers. I hate lawyers that give a bad name to what otherwise should be a noble profession. I especially hate lawyers that put their client above the rest of society. Their client gains but everyone else suffers.
There is no greater example of this than recent Vioxx case. A man whose arteries is 70% blocked dies of arrhythmia -something that Vioxx has never been accused of causing, and the jury finds that Merck is responsible for his death.
Never mind that Vioxx was approved by the FDA.
The found Merck liable because they felt bad for the widow, felt bad that Merck's lawyers hammered her on the witness stand, and wanted to stick it to Merck.
That's wonderful - except none of that is grounds for finding liabilty.
What happens when dug companies start scaling back research for new drugs because of fear of lawsuits? Everyone suffers.
There is no greater example of this than recent Vioxx case. A man whose arteries is 70% blocked dies of arrhythmia -something that Vioxx has never been accused of causing, and the jury finds that Merck is responsible for his death.
Never mind that Vioxx was approved by the FDA.
The found Merck liable because they felt bad for the widow, felt bad that Merck's lawyers hammered her on the witness stand, and wanted to stick it to Merck.
That's wonderful - except none of that is grounds for finding liabilty.
What happens when dug companies start scaling back research for new drugs because of fear of lawsuits? Everyone suffers.
posted by LWY, 10:28 PM
4 Comments:
That's the danger of having a jury of your peers. Most Americans are pretty stupid and I wouldn't necessarily want them on a jury if I were being tried for something (uless I was the sympathy-inducing one). Juries are a great obsrtacle to justice - more so than lawyers I would argue.
The Law is truly fascinating. Lawyers? Now that is something else all together. Good luck.
For some reason, this is at the top of your feeds... so I read it. A friend of ours is now working for Merck on these lawsuits - he said it's so clear that they should win it's laughable, but meanwhile, thanks to this, they're wasting many many millions on people like him trying to defend themselves.
I had a jurisprudence professor in school who said the following, when we were discussing issues of malpractice and ethics. He repeated it often, and it stuck with me:
"Never confuse the following three things: what's legal, what's right, and what's done."
Hear, hear.
"Never confuse the following three things: what's legal, what's right, and what's done."
Hear, hear.
