Orlando Injury Lawyers Address “Most Outrageous Lawsuits”
Trying Florida injury lawsuits we have seen the negative effects in jury selection of the lawsuit propaganda put out by the insurance industry, business groups and medical associations. Despite all the efforts of the Florida Justice Association and the American Association for Justice, this propaganda continues and our jury pools will remain infected for the foreseeable future.
To illustrate, America Online (AOL) is running an article titled "Most Outrageous Lawsuits." It describes "crazy lawsuits" reported by groups like Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA) and the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA). As personal injury and medical malpractice lawyers, we know these groups see personal injury lawsuits as evil attempts to crush business in the United States. They see no need to hold corporate giants accountable for injury and death to innocent people. They have and will continue to distort the truth about our profession and the American Civil Justice System. By using these fictitious stories of lawsuit madness or twisting the truth of real cases, they poison our future jurors.
Certainly, no personal injury lawyer will ever forget the famous McDonald’s coffee case. Importantly, from our jury selection it seems as though no juror will ever forget that case. As lawyers the lesson we have learned from all this is: Swim with the current. While I support and commend the activities of our state and national associations to undo the image of rampant frivolous lawsuits resulting in billions of dollars for unscrupulous lawyers, we must effectively represent our injury and medical malpractice clients today in this environment.
Fighting this propaganda in the media makes sense. Doing so in the courtroom does not. You must never swim against the rip current unless you plan on becoming a statistic. Instead, you must champion your legitimate injury or malpractice case by contrasting it to the jurors’ perception of frivolous cases they have heard about. Without a doubt, EVERY case I have tried has little difficulty appearing meritorious when compared to the juror’s perception of the “case where the lady spilled McDonald’s coffee while driving at high speed and received a 100 million dollars for a little burn.”
Please understand that I am familiar with the McDonald’s case facts. However, I am not going to try to validate the McDonald’s jury verdict with my client’s jury panel. I would never assume that jurors will believe some lawyer over what they have accepted as truth years before they stepped into our courtroom. Instead, I will allow the jury to compare my client's case with all those “outrageous lawsuits.” Against that standard, I like our clients' chances every time.
