Frivolous Cases To Trial example essay topic

My impression of the civil trial process as part of our system of justice is negative in that it permits large companies fight and preclude small people from bringing their actions, the way it is set up, and it overloaded and is not really an effective means of stopping people from bringing frivolous cases to trial, which helps lead to justice being slower and more expensive then ever. The first reason that my impression is negative of the civil trial process as part of our system of justice is that it permits large companies to fight and preclude small people from bringing their actions. It makes it hard for the small people to go up against big companies for many reasons, two of more important ones being the access to justice and the other the costs of litigation. It is hard for ordinary people to gain access to the courts and with all the attorney, courts, other costs it is extremely expensive. In some cases, such as person injury or so, the lawyers for the plaintiff will work on a contingency basis, just as Schlichtmann did in the book. The cases where the defendant is a corporation, they are considered repeat players, in which they therefore already have significant advantages against the one-shutters.

The corporations have the funds in order to finance a stall defense. They primarily show / use these advantages in the pretrial process, especially during the discovery step. In the book Beatrice and Grace use numerous dilatory or counterstrike motions in trying to stall the case, with attempt to run up the plaintiffs costs till their spirit is broke. Also throughout the trial, the companies still continue to rack up profits while the plaintiffs (or lawyers of) are consistently loosing money. These are a few of the ways that the large companies fight and preclude small people from bringing their cases. The next reason is the way it is set up.

To many times juries are giving exuberant amounts of money to the plaintiff. For that reason it encourages more and more lawyers to take on frivolous cases just to make the money. Since there are so many cases being brought against the companies it forces then to fight and defend more cases, which in turn may and does at times lead to a lot of the real cases being lost or forgot about. It causes what the book may call "litigation explosion". In the book Schlichtmann made his money from several multi-million dollar medical malpractice suits, which in reality because of so many of these cases the insurance companies raise their rates ridiculously high for malpractice insurance. This has lead to the decrease in doctors and other such occupations because they can not afford the insurance or risk being sued.

Also, the lawyer's greediness for money, in other words lawyers pass over cases that seem to be a no win situation, so those people seeking justice are being robbed of their right to a trial. Schlichtmann and his law firm hesitated to take the Woburn case because the time and energy needed for it didn't equal the means. They looked at the financial out come of the verdicts (based on common law-precedent) along with the knowledge that there was a case to be made here is why they took it. The companies now also being more frequent repeat players need to defend themselves more because they also look at promoting a favorable outcome for future cases. This is all reason for what is now known as port reform, which limits awards plaintiffs can win for personal injury, therefore trying to stop this cycle. Third, our system is overloaded and is not really an effective means of stopping people from bringing frivolous cases to trial, which helps lead to justice being slower and more expensive then ever.

The system we use is referred to as the American system and says that both sides pay for their own attorneys fees. The other system known as the English system says that the loser pays all the lawyers fees, those from the other side as well. This system would force lawyers to be less inclined to bring all their frivolous law suits for the chance that they may loose and have to pay. It also has companies more willing and wanting to sit down at a table and try to work out a settlement, then risk losing at the trial. There are other alternatives that may also help this situation such as ADR, arbitration and mediation, which allows for resolutions to be made without recourse to the courts. Justice was and was not done in the Woburn case.

Justice was done in that the company that found to have done something fraudulent had to pay in some way for what they did. In the end both companies agreed to finance an expensive clean up plan. Although the families received about $1 million after all was done, that's a small price to pay for the illnesses and deaths of loved ones. I did not think justice was done for a few reasons.

One is that the companies never had to admit they were at fault. Within the process of the trial there were many instances that justice proved not to be served. There later showed to be evidence that there were many documents and such that were not revealed to Schlichtmann by Beatrice's lawyers in discovery. Also how the jury was confused that it should not have been making any decisions and the decisions they made did not make sense, such as dropping the Beatrice case but not the Grace. It seems to me that the judge made his decisions based on the fact that he wanted it to be over already and all the publicity it was getting.

These are a few of the reason why I feel that justice was and wasn't done in the Woburn case.