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The gloves are off: for decades, tort 'reform' proponents have been fomenting suspicion of the civil justice system and anger at trial lawyers, who have taken it on the chin for far too long. It's time trial lawyers fought for themselves and the courts as passionately as they do for their clients.

Article Excerpt
It's a joke everyone's heard: Why do researchers prefer using lawyers in their scientific experiments instead of white rats? Because there are some things even a rat won't do.

It's a pretty funny line, actually, tapping into the public's perception that attorneys, particularly those engaged in high-profile lawsuits involving millions of dollars, will do and say practically anything to win.

The comical professional image ranks right up there with doctors handing off their putters and removing their golf shoes just before they enter an operating room, and dozens of road workers standing around a pothole where one crewmember is doing all the digging. Americans enjoy laughing at themselves and, after all, what's the harm in a little fun?

None, really, except when some of the nation's most powerful lobbying groups--organizations with access to vast financial resources--use the image to destroy the civil justice system, which often is the only hope of recourse for people whose lives have been shattered as a result of another's misconduct.

For example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pulling out all the stops to ensure that big business won't be held accountable for the faulty, often dangerous, sometimes deadly merchandise it puts on the market. The Chamber is working in all 50 states and at the federal level to dismantle the civil justice system.

It wants to limit the punitive damages that can be recovered in state courts by consumers or workers who have been injured or killed by a defective product. And the Chamber is trying to convince federal lawmakers that producers of a product more than 12 years old should be protected from liability if the product proves faulty and leads to injury or death.

Regrettably, the Chamber's relentless campaign to eviscerate consumers' legal rights has experienced some success. Individuals seriously injured by a product can no longer coalesce under a large class-action umbrella in state court. Most of these actions have been pushed into federal court, where progress is slow and judges are often less sympathetic.

All of these initiatives have one goal: to maximize profits by eliminating the ability of consumers and workers to hold corporations accountable for their negligent actions. But since the Chamber can't admit its desire to block courthouse access to the weakest among us, it has constructed a straw man that it seeks to knock down--the trial lawyer.

In the fantasy world concocted by the Chamber, the trial lawyer is ruining the U.S. economy by attempting to "manipulate the civil justice system by...

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