jj@rabbit.UUCP (08/27/83)
1) Seems that we should keep the complaints about lawyers in net.flame or perhaps net.politics. Having been a school rent-a-cop for three years <while going to h`that school>, I support the exclusionary rule even more strictly than the ACLU. I realy don't want to go into the reasons, but it boils down to the fact that it deprived lots of law enforcement officers the ability to make a felon out of their most disliked students. As far the lawyers being responsible for the mess that the american legal system is in, bull! As far as I can see, it's the overly tolerant judges iand lack of redress for defending one's self from frivilous legal action that allows cases with no merit to come to court and take up days of (extremely valuable) court time. While there certainly should be freedom to sue for anything that ails you, there should ALSO be some sort of burden placed on people who plague the courts with completely unfounded suits, suits that are founded but have NO damages associated, or suits that were intended deliberately to harass. I do think that lawyers are responsible for taking advantage of this sort of weakness in the system, and that there really ought to be a way to file both professional and criminal charges against lawyers who file frivilous and/or harassing suits. In addition, there should be a way to file for civil redress for the costs of defending one's self, a concept that is specifically excluded in all but antitrust suits today. Any thoughts on how to determine what is a frivilous suit, what is a deliberately harassing suit, and when to allow the defendant the right to recover his/her/its costs of suit, including lost time, money, and business? Furthermore, any thoughts on whether or not the plantiff should be allowed to recover costs in a successful suit? Let's see some constructive dialog. rabbit!jj who doesn't like lawyers at all. P.S. I do greatly dislike the idea fostered in law schools that everything that is legal is moral. <Ask any recent gung-ho law student about that.> I do think that lawyers should be trained to be less opportunistic, and to realize that there is not necessarily a benefit to them or the world when they find a technicality to pick at. As a recent house-buyer, who watched two lawyers argue for an hour over a term in the contract, the effect of which would demonstrably NOT apply, since the time and place for applying it were forever passed <both agreed on that>, I really don't like the current legal and court attitude about technicalities. It seems to me that some contracts are written deliberately to deceive, which seems to me a deliberate perversion of the intent of contracts. <Splutter, flame, I'll shut up before it touches off and lights up!>