(1 votes, average: 2.00 out of 5)A Florida attorney who has built a practice around representing DUI defendants is trying out a different seat in the courtroom.
The lawyer woke up one morning to find that he had an $18,930 tab on his credit card (gulp!) from a single night at the strip club. Even worse, he was “temporarily unconscious” and didn’t remember parts of the evening. So he’s taking the club owners to court to demand a refund, saying that they “knew, or should have known, of plaintiff’s intoxicated state, having caused it.”
So get blackout drunk, run up an exorbitant bar tab on booze and strippers, and then have the audacity to blame somebody else. There’s only one word for it – ridiculous! But is it the most ridiculous lawsuit we’ve seen this month? Or is it one of these:
- Widow of cop-killer files lawsuit; wants payment for his death in shootout
- West Virginia man sues employer after bitten by spider while at work
- Mother sues McDonald’s for including toys in kid’s meals
- “Wet Floor” sign falls on woman’s foot; she sues for mental anguish
Go to the poll to vote for your favorite.
Well, for all we know he might have a valid lawsuit. How can just from this article we determine if he spent the 19k, or if someone was just swiping his credit card all day and it wasn’t authorized by him!. Seriously i don’t see how one man could spend that much at a bar.
And same goes with the guy getting bit by a spider, if he was at the job and cut his finger off with a saw he can sue, so why cant he sue if he get’s bit by a spider while at work. Brown recluses can do way more damage then a saw.
I would like to point out that these ridiculous cases may provoke chuckles, but they point up serious underlying problems. Such outrageous positions couldn’t be taken unless there was (1) a widespread societal attitude that justifies seeking scapegoats for everything that goes wrong, and that moral or ethical considerations are irrelevant. 2) ridiculous suits couldn’t be filed without lawyers willing to file them.
The latter points up the fact that the U.S. law profession on a national basis has no ethical watchdog that polices lawyers for unethical behavior that tends to discredit the profession. I have inquired with faculty on the Harvard Law School and they acknowledged they knew of no such organization. State bar groups exist, but their concern seems to be more outright illegal matters, or people who try to practice law without a license.
If we wanted to be cynical we could say there is no concern about upholding professional ethics because in the U.S. the law profession as a whole has no ethics to uphold.
The widely accepted and asserted claim that the adversarial system is the best way to find out the truth runs into immediate trouble with a number of frequently encountered examples. 1) contending clients have lawyers with unequal abilities or resources; 2) One lawyer is skilled in twisting and bending the truth, including making false claims designed to discredit the opposite client, whereas the other lawyer avoids such methods and is unprepared to deal with his adversary; 3) juries are naive and easily manipulated by emotional arguments, or judges have a bias; 4) neither or both lawyers have the technical abilities to really undestand complex question, and hence base their cases on “human” interest.
I think that groups criticizing U.S. litigiousness need to go beyond just attacking the trial lawyers and point out the tremendous social damage the system does to American society, and how weak its unerpinnings really are. If statistics were brought out about what percentage of, say doctor or hospital clients had legitimate grievances and what percentage of those get recompense, we might find out that the system as it currently operates primarily benefits the legal profession, not victims of malpractice.
is so patently flawed that it is amazing that it is asserted so baldly.