Aren't they safer with four vaccine makers instead of 20? If they're making it properly, yeah. Sure, you bet. Recently, the lawyers discovered an even bigger jackpot. Breast implants made of silicone. The best medical studies say there is no proof such implants cause disease. But again, that doesn't matter. The lawyers just need to convince a jury. So the first thing I'm going to do is just... The next target is probably Norplant, the birth control implant. Doctors say it's safe, but hey, it has silicone in it. Lawyers are already recruiting. Another choice of birth control may soon vanish, because lawyers get a few juries to send a message.

You have decisions of policy being made by random panels of six or twelve people. That kind of decision is one which belongs in a legislature. It doesn't belong in the hands of six people inflamed by some Joe Jamal. Tart explosion. Litigation explosion. That is a lie, my friend. We don't have a crisis here. No way. The tort lawyers claim there hasn't been an explosion in suits. Their critics say, of course there's been. But whatever the numbers are, they are hard to pin down. Fear is up. Fear of lawsuits is changing the way we live. For years, this Arizona couple cooked thousands of free Thanksgiving dinners for the poor.

Until this year, when they decided it was too risky, after someone got a stomachache and threatened to sue. Such little losses are everywhere. Girl scout camps that eliminate horseback riding. Some parents are afraid to coach little leagues because they could get sued over a pop fly. It's already happened. The soccer league where I coach sent me a notice that says, if a child gets a nosebleed or there's dry blood in the uniform, I'm supposed to stop the game, put on these latex gloves from the medical kit, and clean all the blood away.

America's running scared from you. I mean, I'll say whoever sent you this is a nut. But this is what you guys do. Well, I don't think we are, okay? American lawyers don't do this. Anybody's gonna help a child that's bloody got a bloody nose. You don't need some guy to write you a letter. I don't have to put the latex gloves on and wipe off the ball? You're so dumb, I can't. Will you defend me if somebody sues me?

Yes, you bet. How can I pay his fee? Of course, some coaches really are negligent. Some companies victimize innocent people. Those coaches and companies deserve to be punished, and their victims deserve compensation. Tort lawyers like Jameel make that happen. King of Tort. This might be a reasonable system, if at least most of the money went to the victims. But it usually doesn't.

Astonishingly, when added together, the tort lawyer fees, the defense costs, the court costs, less than half the money gets to the victims. How could it be a good system if most of the money goes to you lawyers and not to these poor victims? I don't know what price to put on justice. Yet so much legal work is about price. Owes hope. Costs. Less than half the money gets to the victims. How can it be a good system if most of the money goes to you lawyers and not to these poor victims? I don't know what price to put on justice. Yet so much legal work is about price.

Thank you for calling Ticketmaster and Magic Art. Ticketmaster's operators sell tickets to shows all over America. The operators aren't at the site of the shows. Yet when people get hurt, Ticketmaster gets sued anyway. Sued by a young man who jumped into one of these mosh pits. Sued by a man who fell down the stairs at a boxing match. Sued when a man bought a ticket at a mall and was shot. The family... He sued us. He sued the mall owner, the operator, the security people.

Ticketmaster lawyer Ned Goldstein points out that lawyers know it pays to sue lots of people. It costs the lawyer nothing extra to name Ticketmaster, the yogurt store, and so on. Because who knows, who might have the deep pockets, the money to pay up. Of course, all these people now have to pay lawyers. Lawyers for the people suing you say, you're making money on these tickets, you're responsible to make sure the arena is safe. They want to twist the system to extort money out of the system when this money is not anything they're entitled to. If you're worried about these suits, you're going to be more careful. This makes America safer.

It does make it safer. What it does do is it makes lawyers richer. Local news... The newest way for lawyers to get very rich is to combine cases into what's called a class action suit. Some really ugly things are going on here. Ambulance chasing blood-sucking attorneys. That was George Watts' reaction when he learned he was a class member in a suit against Intel, maker of the Pentium chip. Now some Pentium chips were defective, but Intel volunteered to exchange the chips. Watts had gotten a new chip for his computer, free, and he was happy.

Yet without his okay, that's how it works, some lawyers then sent him this notice saying they were suing Intel for him. Watts and others would essentially win what he'd already gotten, a free chip. And the lawyers, well they guessed. Six million dollars. Why would Intel pay? Well they were facing major litigation. At that point, no matter how blameless you are, you say to yourself, I'm gonna settle out. I'll pay tribute. This is not far removed from what Al Capone used to do to shopkeepers on the west side of Chicago. Extortion. It's extortion. There are lots of class actions where the lawyers get a lot and the clients... Well, look at this suit against a bank.

Clients won a few dollars, but it cost them much more. The millions their lawyers got were charged to their own bank accounts. A General Mills supplier accidentally used an illegal chemical. No one was hurt. General Mills settled by giving us customers a coupon for a free box of cereal. The lawyers got almost $2 million. Gee, lawyers, thanks for defending me. A few years ago, an explosion in a chemical plant spewed fumes over Richmond, California. 200 lawyers and their agents rushed into town. When they talk about people hustling drugs and, you know, hustling other things, attorneys hustle, too, and they were actually out here hustling people.

Michelle Jackson runs the neighborhood community center. It was like, you know, herding cattle. You just fill out this paper and sign right here and boom, boom, boom. Take this card and call his attorney. And then that way you can- I want one for my granddaughter. I'm gonna call the attorney that, the number that he just gave me and I'll send it. Lawyers told their new clients, go to the hospital.

How many people went to the hospital? 20,000, I think over 20,000. How many were admitted? 20. Sounds like a racket. It is the ultimate racket. The chemical company facing 70,000 claims agreed to a 180 million dollar settlement. Most alleged victims will get one to three thousand dollars. The lawyers, well they want millions. That's what's to be discussed in this courtroom today. That's why all these lawyers are filing in to fight for their fees. Only one lawyer was here to argue that the lawyers should get less. That's Larry Schoenberg. Over the past several years, he's waged a lonely campaign to cut the fees in class action cases. Usually, everyone just goes along.

The company goes along with it. The lawyers, of course, go along with it. The public doesn't know. Right. So you, lonely you, you... Excuse me, sir, I think that's too much. Correct. He hasn't had much success. The judge in this case decided our cameras could not remain in court while the lawyers discussed fees.

Schoenbrun did get to complain, but the judge cut him off. That's typical of judges, says Schoenbrun. He just wants to push this along and sweep it under the rug. He wanted to ask the lead attorneys why they deserved so much money, but they didn't want to be interviewed. The judge finally decided the lawyers could split some $40 million. And what should they get? $2 million? $1 million? $100,000? Well, if it were up to me, I would eliminate these cases altogether. Remember, in the last analysis, the company doesn't pay. The insurance company doesn't pay you pay and I pay and that's one reason why I'm upset about it I'm paying this I'm paying for his you know Villa in Southern, California I'm paying for all these riches that these guys have accumulated and I'm not happy about it because they're not doing anything for me Even Joe Jamal says class-action lawyers go too far. He won't take those cases Still, in all lawsuits, the extortion-like threat's always there.

Defendants often settle because it's too expensive to fight. Especially if you face a master like Jameel. And then there have been thousands that have been paid me at the doorstep of the courthouse. Literally thousands. They pay because it's you. Sometimes. It's cheaper this way. Let's get the f*** out of my life. People don't want to face you in court. Sounds like a shakedown. It's kind of like, uh, give me $500 or I'll beat you up.

That isn't how it looks to me. It looks to me like they're intelligent. True, I'm good enough to run over a lot of them. I'm just saying it's not as easy as you make it out to be. If it was, everybody would be this good. And this rich. Yes. Of course, most of us will never deal directly with giants like Jameel. We're more likely to need a lawyer to handle, say, a divorce or a fight with a neighbor. Well, look at how ugly that can get.

Next. Still to come. Lawyers share some outrageous tricks of the trade. You're prepared to mislead without actually lying. You're prepared to present the facts in the light most favorable to your case. Ha ha ha ha ha. She said that as a lawyer. The Trouble with Lawyers. With John Stossel. Not just by what I've learned as a reporter, I've had first-hand experience.

I've sued and been sued. I sued when I got slugged by a wrestler who didn't like my saying, Pro-wrestling is fake. You think it's fake, you cunt? And I've been sued by people who didn't like what I said about them on TV. I won all those cases. Yet, even after winning, it didn't feel like I'd won. Why? I think it has something to do with the way the system works. These days, when we think about the legal system, many of us think about this.

The OJ trial was, of course, unusual. An abomination, some call it. In some ways, it was an abomination because it's so typical. Did you see the defendant at 945? No. Did you know where he was at 945? No. Did you see the defendant at 950? No. In 20 years of consumer reporting, I've seen most every American industry find ways to do things better, faster, cheaper, but not this business.

Did you see the defendant at 9.55? No. Lawyers say justice takes so much time because they have to protect your rights, make sure all proper procedures are followed, due process it's called. Did you see the defendant at 10.15? No. When they have a very visible case, a client with money, you get process a mile high. In the name of due process, they'll obsess about everything. Even the jewelry the lawyers wear. Your Honor said we were not to wear buttons, badges, or whatever.

Does this obsession over detail increase the chance that justice is done? What are you proposing? She'd take it off. Not really. In fact, the higher they pile process... I don't even know if the jury can tell it's an angel....the less it looks like justice. The lawyers and judges are often so obsessed with minutia... Mr. Cochran is always coming into court wearing a cross. Common sense is forgotten.

Mr. Cochran, you have a wide assortment of lapeltins. Certainly time is forgotten. Did you see the defendant at 10.30? No. As endless as this trial was. Did you see the defendant at 10.40? No. In some ways it was quicker than many, because this was a criminal case. A criminal defendant has a right to demand a speedy trial. O.J. Simpson got his case to court within seven months.

But what keeps most lawyers busy are civil cases. That's where you argue not about whether someone should be jailed, but about money. Civil cases often take years just to get to court. It's tough on people who think they were injured. This dentist entrepreneur, for example, who says, I slandered him. John Stossel reports, while millions may suffer, some dentists are getting rich. I damaged his reputation. Cost him millions, he says. He wants a jury to make ABC and me pay him $22 million. But just getting me into this courtroom took him almost four years. The goals of our system are good.

Stanford University Law Professor Jamie Floyd. The idea in your case was to give this dentist an opportunity to explain to a jury of his peers how he felt he'd been harmed. And then the jury would determine whether he had in fact suffered some harm. And we could all go home feeling that we had our day in court. So why can't it take two weeks instead of four years? That's precisely the problem. It takes four years, sometimes longer, largely because of what's called discovery. And this is what it looked like in my case. Boxes of paperwork. Discovery in theory is where, before trial, the lawyers for both sides trade information.

Get everything out on the table so both sides know where they stand. That's the theory. In reality, lawyers often use discovery to delay, intimidate, obfuscate. It's this constant head-banging, trying to get documents, trying to get information. It simply stalls the process down. In my case, the dentist and my lawyers spent three years sending this stuff back and forth. My lawyers demanded that the dentist... Identify all persons other than your attorneys with whom you have had written or oral communications... And so on. We demanded thousands of documents.

Identify each workshop or seminar in which you have participated as a speaker, including but not limited to your seminars for dentists, physicians, lawyers, and headache sufferers. After all, who knows what information might be useful? The date, the location, the attendance, the amount charged to each attendee... And of course, they demanded that we... State the title and author of each book that was used as a source of information, the name and date of publication of each newspaper, magazine, pamphlet... Sometimes they wanted documents, and in case we didn't know what that meant, they made it clear. Ready? Documents means... Any abstracts, accounts, accounting records, accounting advertisements, agreements, bids, bills, bills of letting, blanks, books, books of account...

That's just the A's and B's. We'll skip ahead. New reports, memoranda, memos, messages, microfilm, microfiche... You can keep the process going 24 hours a day for three or four years. Tapes, telesits, telegrams, teletype messages, tests, test reports... And then maybe the client will run out of money and won't be able to continue to litigate. Why did your company make... The gamesmanship continues during depositions. That's where you get to question your opponent before trial. Lawyers often show their clients tapes which tell you, you should answer only the question you're asked. Keep your answer short and then stop.

Don't answer the question for God's sake. And I think that's... You're under oath, you have to be honest. Well, you have to be honest, but you don't have to be completely straightforward. So you're prepared to mislead without actually lying? You're prepared to present the facts in the light most favorable to your case. She said that as a lawyer. We have lawyers running the system, and the problem with that is that lawyers don't have an obligation and a commitment to the truth. They have an obligation to win. So we've got a combat system rather than a truth system. You have a research. There's a lot of research.

My case sure seemed like combat to me. You don't do any research, do you? Frankly, this guy was so scary that he might have reduced me to a mumbling, drooling wreck, and I've not, thankfully, been prepared. Mr. Stopps, I'll show you what has been marked as plaintiff's exhibit. Thank goodness I was backed by ABC, which could afford to pay top-of-the-line lawyers to give me trial practice. One night after court, we reenacted some. You're not a doctor how can you tell what's relevant and what's not? I can answer that one. Burt Rublin is the behind-the-scenes lawyer. Trial is rather akin to battle. If trials akin to battle, who's he? He's the hired gun. We don't have a copy of that. Jerry Shestak's the one who fought for me in court. I was glad I had a hired gun on my side in this war.

You're never on my side. But I have to wonder, is letting hired guns fight the best way to resolve disputes? This is a machine. The main issue in this case was that I'd said Dr. Owen Rogel prescribed unnecessary medical treatments, but he even said I should be treated. Dr. Rogel claims he didn't tell me to get treatment. Fortunately, my meeting with him had been videotaped. So in just 40 minutes, the jury could see the whole exam and decide for themselves.

Except they never got to watch it. Instead we had war. Each side played snippets of the exam. Outtakes we call them. Those outtakes will tell the real story of what Owen Rogel said to John Stossel, the news reporter. Of course Rogel's lawyers played outtakes that showed him being cautious. My lawyers played the ones where Rogel recommended treatment. His side played five minutes, my side played five minutes. We did it again and again for days. It was ridiculous. That's what got to me most watching my case, the extravagant waste. Even with lawyers charging hundreds of dollars an hour, the judge just lets it go on and on.

Why can't the judge say, shut up you guys, this is costing a fortune, we're just going to play the tape. Oh, the judge can do that. The judge can do that. Why wouldn't the judge do it? Because the judge has an eye always on one thing. Appeal. Most judges are afraid to offend. You're thinking right now about Ito, I guess. Judge Ito could have set a time limit. It's not a stipulation, and one has more testimony, I guess.

How that could have taken the prosecution more than two weeks? It's three at the outside. Don't you lose important facts or due process? No. You lose boredom, my friend. And repetition. The lawyers say, this violates my client's due process. I can't do this in a month. That's bull. So these lawyers are just self-indulgent? No, they were being petty.

All over America, every day, in our daily lives, in our personal lives, in our business affairs, we're making decisions to investigate the facts and decide what action to take. But none of us do it the way it's done in the law courts. And for good reason. What's done in the law courts is absurd. It's distortion and trickery. Done in a slow and pompous way. Reminds me of a religious ritual.

We may not get speedy justice, but we sure get ceremony. Judges wear robes. We call them honorable, whether they are or not. Look at the silly word esquire many lawyers use. It means nothing but it once meant English landowner. All this suggests there's magic in the law, work only they can do. That makes it easier to resist reform. Did you see the defendant at 1045? No. But once you see what's really going on, it's harder to view this process as sacred. I think this is why many lawyers are threatened by cameras in court. It's astonishing what we've sunk to here. Yes, seeing this does diminish the majesty of the law, but that's good. Only when we demystify something can we improve it.

And let's get real, folks. The practice of law isn't sacred. This is a business. And that's the amount of dollars that you take. That's the amount of dollars we'll give him. And that's all. Consider for a moment one of the busiest and nastiest aspects of legal work, divorce law. Because this is a floating court order that gives him half. I don't want you to put anything back in that account. If you're married or ever plan to be, the man you're looking at may be your worst nightmare. Bitch!

He's Florida lawyer Joel Weissman. Mad Dog is his nickname. And if law is combat, maybe you'd do better if your lawyer has a nickname like that. Joel's very successful. He'll represent anyone who will pay his fee. You can afford me. You got me. Before your husband calls. Pay him $325 an hour and he'll argue your case aggressively. Well, I mean, you only had a year to do it. Are you sure or not sure?

I'm not sure. Thank you. He'll badger your opponent. And the reason for that is because you were afraid to find out what it meant. That's not at all true. Then why wouldn't you ask the man? He's on the move and on the clock almost all the time. I'm working right this second. I'm traveling to the next hearing. I'd be working harder if you let me get off the scene if you'll make my phone calls. We spent three days with Joel, after which we were convinced it has to be better to just stay married. Do you now believe that the marriage between you and Mr. Laverne is irretrievably broken and over? In a Laverne case, Rhoda Laverne's who Joel Joel calls the enemy.

And are you asking the court to grant you a divorce today? I am. Yeah, that's her too. Joel's client is her husband, Harry. Harry and Rhoda, now almost 90 years old, don't have much to fight about. A modest trailer home and a few bank accounts. But they're fighting anyway. The other things you have signed are the four cheers. I have four cheers.

Yeah, she wanted those four cheers back. She wanted these four cheers. Well, I don't want to give her them. How are we going to resolve that? You can see how crazy this gets. He's paying his lawyer $325 an hour to argue about things that cost less than that. The money that's supposed to support both of us being eaten out by illegal things, you see. Under the adversarial system, if the clients want to keep fighting, neither lawyer has an incentive to try to stop them. In this next case, the couple's rich.

$1,000,021,672 or... 2672 or the husband has already agreed to pay his ex-wife more than a million dollars Now look at what the lawyers are arguing about their own fees You're the wife's lawyers explaining why the husband should pay him an additional $20,000 and I can tell you that I spent more time than that. So here we have one lawyer charging $325 an hour cross-examining another lawyer also at 325 an hour about how long it takes to read a letter. I'll find you, go ahead. Go, read. Do I read it out loud? Sure, read it out loud.

And then there's costs. What do you charge? I think we charge 30 cents a page. And then where it says fax charges, what do you charge for fax charges? I think it's $2 a page. At ABC, copying costs 3 cents, faxing 30 cents. But the legal system just isn't like other businesses. Joel admits there are abuses, but still says, I don't think you can have a more perfect system. And that's what my lawyers told me.

And they said I should be happy. After all, I won. Do you find in favor of a claimant's lawyer vote for the defendant Stossel? Stossel. But I wasn't happy, because winning cost ABC several hundred thousand dollars. It seemed absurd to me, but not to Professor Floyd. I was surprised because I don't think that's all that much money.

Ah, there's nothing like lawyers' perspective. Well, she's right. My case was cheaper because it was in Philadelphia. In New York, winning might have cost millions. No wonder some people compare lawsuits to extortion. More on that and a possible remedy when we return. Still to come, living in fear of a lawsuit. A neighborhood is silenced. Kids afraid to play ball. All they say, because of this woman. She makes threats, she tells you if you do things you will be sorry, you will be accountable, she will sue you. The trouble with lawyers, with John Stossel, continues.

Continues after this, from our ABC station. If litigation is war, you know something odd about the rules of battle? In America they favor the attacker. A lawyer who sues can win millions. We've seen that, but he can't lose much. Some time, some expense money. But basically, if the case goes against him, the lawyer can just walk away. But if you're sued, you can only lose. Even if you win the case, you lose vast amounts of time and maybe all your money.

What this means is that anyone with a law degree can really torture anybody. Can terrorize a whole neighborhood. That's what people who live in this part of San Francisco say is happening to them. They say they're afraid to play basketball, afraid to let the kids play outdoors, afraid to hold community meetings. They live in fear, they say, because they happen to live near this house, where Patricia McComb lives. She's a thief as far as I'm concerned. The worst kind of thief.

I think she's despicable. It's almost as if there is a bomb right there. It's like an atomic bomb right in the middle of our neighborhood. People fear Patricia McComb. They didn't fear her when she was a dancer or when she was an actress. But then she learned the law. Patricia A. McComb versus David M. Jordan. Now she makes money suing people. Good morning. Morning, Your Honor. She sued this department store saying she slipped on dust and hurt her ankle. She sued this supermarket claiming her foot had been run over by a cart.

And at the local bank, she says her foot was hit by this door. So she sued about that too. She filed a claim against the city of San Francisco, saying she slipped in a puddle at City Hall, spraining her ankle and tearing her nylons. We know of 40 suits, but there may be more, so many that she receives news coverage. Excuse me, you're hurting me. Do you realize that you're just hitting me with your camera? At the courthouse, we found the clerks know her well.

They demanded we not show their faces for fear she'd sue them too. Law suits have a way of silencing people. Many people McComb sued told us, no, I can't talk to you, it's too dangerous. But this group was angry enough to come forward. They say they've all been threatened with suit or sued. She tells you if you do things you will be sorry, you will be accountable, she will sue you. Adrian Taliafar says the neighborhood association spends most of its time fighting Macomb. Sorry, we're entitled to everybody's... Macomb, you have already taken the association to court.

And this is not a great place to live if your children want to play games. The Moylan kids, who live a few doors from Macomb, are reluctant to play soccer on their front lawn. What does this woman do? She's outside. She like, um, takes all these pictures of us? Ha ha ha ha. Why does she take the pictures? She says that she's documenting it so she can sue me. For being a nuisance. Does anyone see how ridiculous it is to walk down the street and have to whisper because you're walking in front of a lady that sues everyone? David Greenbaum and his father live next door to McComb.

David used to play basketball here, but then McComb sued, saying the noise caused her physical and emotional distress. A basketball makes a lot of noise. Were you playing at two in the morning? No, never played at two in the morning. We were playing in the afternoon, like right now, say a day like this. The Greenbombs fought the suit, but after eight years and racking up $35,000 in legal bills, they and their insurance company gave up. The eventual result is this. The Greenbombs had to take their hoop down and McComb got a $5,000 settlement.

I wanted to interview Ms. McComb about all this, but she said it didn't fit her schedule. On the phone she said she's the victim here. She claimed that in every one of her lawsuits, she's in the right. She must have merit to some of these claims because a lot of them settle and she gets paid. Absolutely not. She extorts people because she knows that she's imposing costs of defense. Bank of America's lawyer Greg Spencer says that's what McComb wanted after she said she hurt her foot. McComb's pitch was essentially that Bank of America should pay money to settle without regard to the merit of her claim because it would be expensive to defend the case in court.

She has absolutely nothing to lose. A company has to consider legal fees. It just simply makes more sense to buy her off. Bank of America would. At the trial they won. But their legal costs were $27,000. As I was passing this car, the door opened into traffic. Richard Nelson's insurance company didn't settle either. Nelson and McComb had a minor car accident. And was she injured? I don't think so. McComb claimed she injured her nose, her jaw, her shoulder, her hand. She asked for $600,000. After four years of litigation, a jury awarded McComb no money, but Nelson's insurance company says it still had to pay more than $200,000 in legal costs.

The suit was also tough on Nelson. The last two years of the trial were very hard for me. I'd never been sued before. Hard how? Well, emotionally and physically, both. You had a heart attack? Yeah. Now a judge could stop McComb. Judges can declare someone a vexatious litigant. That means they can't sue again without a court's permission.

That's what's happening at this hearing. It is a drastic denial of constitutional rights, which at this point in time is not appropriate. But judges are reluctant to take away someone's right to sue. This judge could have stopped McComb years ago, but he didn't. Oh, I would have if I had not got involved in something else. After hearing Richard Nilsen's car accident case, Judge Jack Berman did label McComb a vexatious litigant, but when she challenged that on a technicality, Berman backed down. By then I was involved in a murder case, and it just wasn't that important. The fact that she was torturing this man, she's not torturing him, his lawyers are doing all of this work.

He had counsel. He had insurance companies' counsel. They were doing the work. They're the ones who are being tortured. He said this was the most horrible time of his life. He may have taken it more seriously than he should. Well, when you get sued, take it pretty seriously. Sure you do, but you give it to lawyers. If you'd worked a little harder, if you'd cared a little more about the people he's hurting. Oh yeah, I don't doubt that. I don't doubt that. What you're saying is she exploits the system. In the most recent 1993 case...

I am suggesting to you that this is the price you pay for living in a democracy. But other democracies don't pay this price. She doesn't exist in Australia, in Canada, in England, in Sweden. And the reason is too obvious for words. Loser pays, and we are the only advanced legal system in the world that doesn't have it. Loser pays simply says if you sue and the court finds you're wrong you have to pay the other guys legal costs. For example in England these cricket players were sued by this man because he was upset their ball was landing in his garden. When the team won the man who sued had to pay their legal costs. Likewise under loser pays Patricia McComb would have to compensate some of these people. That might make her think twice before she sued again.

Loser pays would make lawyers think harder before suing everybody in sight, as we saw in the Ticketmaster suits. And it would make it harder to bully everyone into settling. The Pentium chip makers, for example, would have had a reason to fight back, because if they'd won, they would recoup their legal costs. Let's not stop over there. Now I should say that in the United States, a judge can't award legal fees if plaintiffs have been clearly out of line. And in my case, ABC may yet get half its legal costs back. But that's rare. Usually defendants get nothing back. When you win, you lose under our system. I win. I defeat your claim. But it has cost me tens, hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars. I have a victory that has brought me to the poorhouse. Loser pays is just one of possible reforms, all of which...

I win. I defeat your claim. But it has cost me tens, hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars. I have a victory that has brought me to the poorhouse. Loser Pays is just one of dozens of possible reforms, all of which have been passionately opposed by America's most influential legal lobbying group, the trial lawyers. Diane Weaver speaks for their association. I have not seen a single proposal that does anything other than limit the rights of the individual and shield people from full accountability. Joe Jamal agrees that loser pays is a terrible idea.

What good will that do? You're so proud of getting people compensation for how they've been damaged. Shouldn't we compensate people who are damaged by you? What do you mean damaged by me? You mean if my client loses? If you sue somebody and you lose, you ought to have to pay for the damage you caused. Then you close the courthouse to poor people and middle class people. That's the argument trial lawyers have repeatedly made to defeat loser pays in the United States. But how well do the poor fare in this country? Yes, there are some lawyers who'll take a case for a small fee, but most poor people can't get a lawyer unless they have a big money case a lawyer wants a piece of. Under loser pays, poor people with good cases, even if they're small, do better.

Because they can get their legal fees back. But what if they lose? Who pays them? Well, some say the lawyers should share the risk. Why can't you pay the bill? Why can't I pay the bill? You win on the upside. You guys are doing pretty well on the upside. Why shouldn't you pay on the downside? There is no way in the world that average John Doe is going to be able to get a quality attorney if that quality attorney is legally responsible.

Nonsense, says Langbein. Loser pays just makes lawyers think harder before they sue. Loser pays does a better job of encouraging people to think about whether the case really is meritorious or not than anything else in a legal system. And that's why every other legal system in the world has it. America has the best legal system in the world. The truth is we have a legal system that is a laughing stock in the civilized world. We have a legal system which encourages people not to want to do business in this country. We have a legal system that gets ever more expensive, that causes us to pay monumental insurance premiums by comparison with the rest of the civilized world. We have a legal system that is a flop. We'll be back in a moment with a small suggestion.

From director Oliver Stone, Nixon. You need a lawyer. Steal from you, trample your rights. So the trouble with lawyers is not that we have lawyers. We need a rule of law in this country. You need lawyers. It is important that there should be lawyers. It is important that there be people to take your side and my side in a dispute. But we have lawyers running the system, and that's why we're out of control. Over the past 30 years, the number of lawyers has risen by almost 200%.

This isn't even working for the lawyers. Yes, law is now the highest paid profession, but the lawyers aren't happy. Many say they went to law school hoping to do good, but now find themselves working incredibly long hours doing tedious work. It's often more about money than justice. A survey of California lawyers found most would change careers if they could. Something's gone wrong. America's brightest young people are choosing a profession many won't like where they're not building something, not making the economic pie bigger, just fighting over who gets which slice. And the rest of us are upset because we're paying for it. Of course part of the trouble with lawyers is us. Americans file about 90 million suits a year. Wouldn't we be better off if we just solved more of our conflicts without lawyers?

I got to phone and call the opposition, the auctioneer and say, hey buddy, we're both paying. It's been every day. What are we going to say? A hot day here in Maryland. Drag it, Ram.

