Are Lawyers Running America?

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And they say lawyers can't always be counted on to put their clients' interests ahead of their own. There have been a few notorious cases, such as a class action against the Bank of Boston for alleged improprieties involving escrow fees. The lawyers were awarded $8.5 million in fees, which was taken directly from customers' bank accounts. One class-action member discovered that $91.33 in legal fees had been deducted from his account--although he received only $2.19 in interest from the settlement award. Even in more traditional fee arrangements, the sheer size of some damage awards can mean that lawyers end up pocketing gargantuan amounts. Fees in nationwide tobacco litigation, for example, could top $30 billion. That's money that could be going to address the underlying problems at which the lawsuits were aimed.

Critics offer a solution: tort reform. They have been pushing for years for restrictions that would make it harder for trial lawyers to collect large punitive-damage awards, which often far exceed the actual damages. Forty-five states have enacted civil-justice-reforms laws that limit such awards; and the Republican-backed Litigation Fairness Act, which is pending in the Senate, would make lawsuits filed by the government subject to the same procedures and laws that apply to injured persons.

Supporters of tort reform complain that trial lawyers are fighting it by contributing millions of dollars to the campaign coffers of sympathetic elected officials and judges. Last year trial lawyers gave $2.7 million in soft money to the national Democratic Party. Angelos personally gave $400,000. In fact, most of this trial-lawyer money went to Democratic candidates for Congress--the group that has been most instrumental in holding the line against national tort reform.

Trial lawyers insist that the role they play is a vital one. The ability to sue for injuries is a basic American right, they say, one that supporters of tort reform are scheming to take away. "[Tort reform] is no more than a code to close the courthouse down to poor and middle-class people," says Jamail. "You don't see these corporations being tentative or bashful about running to the courthouse against each other or against individuals who don't pay their bills."

Leaving important public-policy decisions to elected branches might make sense, trial lawyers say, if those branches did their jobs. But they are so indebted to special interests--including Big Business and the National Rifle Association--that they tend to stay gridlocked. After the shooting rampages at Columbine and elsewhere last year, a large majority of Americans support new controls on firearms--yet Congress has passed no new gun laws.

At almost every stop in his bid for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, Senator John McCain of Arizona asked, "Why can't we get HMO reform? Because the Republicans are in the grip of the insurance companies, and the Democrats are controlled by the trial lawyers." McCain adds today that Congress "can't get anything done [on the Patients' Bill of Rights], so what is Dickie Scruggs doing? He's suing the HMOs. Is Dickie Scruggs doing the right thing? No. But do you blame him? No." Scruggs adds that "we wouldn't have made the progress we've made in civil rights in this country without the courts' acting when the Legislative Branch wouldn't."