Miscellaneous

Blawg Book Highlighter #20: See You in Court

By Bill Gratsch

Blawg Book Highlighter #20: See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation

There's an old lawyer joke that asks: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Three. One to climb the ladder. One to shake it. And one to sue the ladder company.

That old joke, of course, is aimed at the notion that litigation is out of control and that there's a money-grubbing lawyer around every corner who's more than willing to feed off of this lawsuit-happy culture.
In 1995, New York attorney Philip K. Howard wrote a best-selling book, "The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America," that placed the blame for our overly litigious society squarely on liberals and rule-bound government.

Now comes a rebuttal of sorts from Chicago labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan, "See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation" (New Press). As the book description argues: "In reality, it is the conservative revolution that opened the floodgates of litigation and helped spur the lawsuit culture that Howard and others decry." According to Geoghegan, "the country's current addiction to litigation and the need to find someone wrong is a natural response to the right's dismantling of America's postwar legal system ? a system based on contract, trust, and administrative law, in which it was not necessary to go to court in order to stay solvent, keep your job, or recover from an accident."

Adam Liptak, writing for the New York Times, finds Geoghegan's contribution to the debate to be a "charming leftist examination of the litigation culture." Liptak says the book "is eminently readable" and that Geoghegan is "amusingly honest about the intellectual dishonesty of some of his own positions." However, Liptak also notes that Geoghegan "can also be maddeningly digressive and repetitive" and decries the lack of an index or list of sources for the book. He ultimately gives the book a pass, stating, "But I guess you don't need footnotes for a rant."

Noah Berlatsky, writing for the Chicago Reader, is not so forgiving. Although he praises Geoghegan as a "sharp thinker," he finds that overt partisanship undercuts the author's message. According to Berlatsky, Geoghegan "often seems more interested in scoring points than in fairness."

Geoghegan is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. He has represented the United Mine Workers, Teamsters for Democracy, and currently works at Despres, Schwartz & Geoghegan.

************************************************************************************

Randy Richardson is an author, humorist, former journalist, and a lawyer. His fiction debut, Lost in the Ivy, a murder mystery set against the backdrop of Chicago's storied Wrigley Field, won the Writers Marketing Association's ?Fresh Voices? Book Award and the Illinois Woman's Press Association's Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest. He writes the Dad Libs column for SanityCentral.com and is a frequent contributor to Chicago Parent magazine. In his day job, he is an attorney for the Social Security Administration?s disability appeals branch. At night and during lunch breaks, he serves as president of the Chicago Writers Association (chicagowrites.org) and works on his second novel while a 4-year-old tugs on his legs. Visit his website at www.lostintheivy.com.

***********************************************************************************

Full post as published by Blawgs Blog by Bill Gratsch on January 26, 2008 (boomark / email).