| President's Column
August 2005 / Volume 41, Issue 8
Promises to keep
The last South Carolinian to be president
of AAJ was James “Spot” Mozingo of Darlington, back in 1952. Someone
once asked Spot why he was a plaintiff lawyer, and he replied, “Because
I like people better than I like buildings.”
Actually, Spot never was really an AAJ president, because there wasn’t
an AAJ in those days. The organization was then known as NACCA—the
National Association of Claimants’ Compensation Attorneys. The name was
a reflection of the fact that almost all the lawyers representing people
were workers’ compensation practitioners. There were few tort lawyers
around because there was so little tort law. 
When Spot took office, he wouldn’t have
found much to be optimistic about. Everywhere he looked, he would have
seen special treatment for special interests: charitable immunity,
spousal immunity, parental immunity, governmental immunity; there was
even immunity for negligent injury of a car passenger. Contributory
negligence was the majority rule. The words “adequate award” were
unheard of.
Not content with its statutory and common
law advantages, the insurance industry was actively engaged in a
campaign to drive jury verdicts even lower. As documented in Richard
Jacobson’s book, David and Goliath, ads were being placed in Time and
Life magazines, claiming that jury awards drove up premiums and hurt the
economy. One insurance executive even went so far as to send such
information in the mail directly to the homes of people sitting on a
jury.
Thank goodness Spot—along with other
early stalwarts like Moe Levine, Mel Belli, and Harry Philo—didn’t take
this lying down. In 1962, Spot became the first lawyer in America to
obtain a jury verdict for a plaintiff injured by an unforgiving vehicle
interior. Harry and others spread out across the country to educate and
recruit lawyers on the side of people. Tom Lambert became the
intellectual voice of the movement.
AAJ lawyers went on to stake new claims
on frontiers of fairness in almost every area of the law. Immunities
crumbled, contributory negligence was abolished, privity was eliminated,
and the negligently injured were finally able to get true justice.
And the dire predictions of the insurance
industry? They proved false. Ordinary Americans were now able to fight
on even ground with corporations, and still the economy prospered. From
the early 1950s until the 21st century, unemployment figures dwindled
and disposable incomes rose. It seemed, contrary to insurance industry
propaganda, we could have both justice and butter.
Unfortunately, evil never sleeps. Corporate interests hatched a
long-term plan to take justice back from American citizens and to hoard
it for themselves. They established rich think tanks to spread their
lies about juries. They wrote books and took out ads, the way they had
before. They invented fictitious cases to complain about. They created a
whole new lexicon: “frivolous lawsuits,” “runaway juries,” and “junk
science.” They spent so much money and time on their message that it
eventually spread over the country like kudzu. They made allies of the
very people they intended to disenfranchise.
And so we have been pushed back almost to
the borders of the fairness frontier our founders knew. We have Daubert
and its progeny keeping legitimate science out of the courtroom, along
with preemption, damages caps, and all manner of limitations on the
authority of the jury. So cynical are the purveyors of these lies that
when these so-called tort reforms don’t work, when insurance premiums go
up instead of down, they don’t admit they were wrong—they claim the
measures didn’t go far enough.
The good news is that while the weed of
disinformation is widespread, it is not deeply rooted. Americans
understand they have a right to sit on a jury and set the standards for
their communities. They understand that our legal system functions to
curb corporate power and that responsibility creates safety. When
reminded of the benefits of the jury system, no honest American wants to
lose it.
Our challenge is to make sure Americans
remember what they have always known. We embark this year on a project
AAJ has never seriously tried before: the education of the public about
the role of lawyers and juries in making this country safe and free.
You’ll be hearing and reading more about this in the months to come. It
won’t be easy, but we owe it to those who came before us, who sacrificed
so dearly and gained so much for all of us. I promise you, I’m committed
to winning this fight—because I like people better, too.
—Kenneth M. Suggs
RELATED INFORMATION:
Ken Sugg's Bio
Announcement of AAJ Presidency
Articles: "New President Hopes to Boost Trial Lawyers' Image"
About Our Law Firm
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