It is the duty of the revolution to put an end to compromise, and to put an end to compromise means taking the path of socialist revolution.
-Lenin, Speech On The Agrarian Question November 14 (1917)

 

Torts is the law of damages. It is the godmother of one of the most popular characters in the legal realm: the greedy, unethical personal injury lawyer. Chasing ambulances from dawn to dusk, ready to turn your scraped knee into a traumatic, devastating injury through all the smoke and mirrors the cold, impersonal legal system provides. Like many mythical figures, it derives from a real phenomenon. I once interviewed at a law firm for a paralegal position where one of the two partners pretty closely resembled this character, at least by what assessment I could make in thirty minutes. He all but asked me how good at lying I was and whether I could “handle” clients. But overall, as the film Hot Coffee aptly demonstrates, personal injury lawyers are not like this stereotype and personal injury cases are rarely if ever as easy to dismiss (though again, there are exceptions: for a laugh, check out the case Van Camp v. McAfoos).

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