Civil Rights Act of 1991

[[AK]Clay]

Learned an absolutely fascinating history lesson today: None of this has been confirmed, so by all means call BS where you see it!

Prior to ~1989 the American Bar Association supported the concept of it being illegal for lawyers to advertise. They felt it cheapened their profession.

Up to this time, there were around 750,000 lawyers in the USA, 25% were considered underemployed.

A group of young lawyers formed a small subcoalition and challenged this by advertising. They were shut down by the law, and took the case to the supreme court. They won.

They grew in so doing this, and essentially did a coup in the Bar. They took it over. With their new political power, they then encouraged Congress to pass the Civil Rights law of 1991. This law, effectively opened the door to a whole new array of lawsuits. It did this by forcing trial by jury and punitive damage awards for any discrimination based law. Prior to this, it was trial by Judge (who actually knew the law), and awards were limited to actually damages and costs.

Combined with new advertising rights, this new legislation created a landslide of new discrimination lawsuits, such as the country has never seen.

Love em or hate em - this act is credited as being one of the largest factors in America today being one of the most litigious societies in the world. It corrected many ills - and IMHO introduced a whole lot of new ones. Individuals can essentially blackmail companies with risky lawsuits in fishing expeditions, or vindictive cases. They usually won't win, but only at great cost to the companies, and every so often, they'll hit the jackpot. It's a numbers game. Often the companies will just write a check to settle a weak lawsuit, rather than blow the money and take the risk of going to court.

Possibly related factor - To me it has been stated that one of the key factors that make doing business or opening a manufacturing facility in the USA not our labor costs. While wages are high, so too is productivity. The reason it's not cost effective to open a manufacturing business in the US is due to our difficult and high-risk (financially) labor and environmental laws.




If most of it is true, then MHO a better balance is needed. We probably did need more, as the USA was pretty difficult for many back in the 70's 80's and some ways even into today.

However, we're killing American business. It's also a stressful minefield for a basic manager to just do his job. My first suggestion - Punitive damages should go the government, not the suing agency. And compensation to legal fees should only come from the damage settlement that goes to the plaintiff. (i.e. someone sues, they get $30,000 in damages and $3,000,000 in punitive awards. That $3M is essentially a fine, so should go to .gov). I'd like to see a return to trial by judge. These cases are not innocent until proven guilty.

[[AK]Hylander]

Attorney Fees should be restricted. They need to do away with "On Contingency" cases. If the Attorney takes the case "On Contingency", at the end he should only be able to take the money he would have earned on an hourly basis and a small percentage premium. Maybe +20%. Look at class action lawsuits. The lawyers get $20 mill and each plaintiff gets a check for $8.

Attorneys and litigation are destroying alot of industry in this country, particularly the medical and related fields. They expect all doctors to be God and be 100% Perfect at all times. Don't get me wrong, I understand there are real malpractice and negligence cases that are horrific - but there is just to much emphasis on "making them pay" under all circumstances. Lawyers know many insurance companies will settle well before it hits any courtroom because it's cheaper to do so.

I'll tell you whats fun... try dealing with The Patriots Act and Bank Secrecy Act for awhile. We "waste" more time dealing with regulations and compliance than we do anything else We have to spend money meeting these requirements, and once they enact regulations - they NEVER go away. It only gets more and more convoluted by the year. You call your attorney for advice and they give you the run around because they don't want to be on the hook for any specific courses of actions they may tell you to take because some of the specific requirements are so vague. Such as, instead of telling you how often you should be performing a certain function, they use the term "regularly". So, what does "regularly" mean? Once a week? A month? 6 months? All anyone is trying to do is make sure they show due diligence in case anything ever comes up. I'm just thankful that I'm at a Credit Union where our membership is restricted - We serve one county in NJ. So it's pretty easy to prove that the Jose Alvarez (bogus name of course) that shows up on the OFAC or FinCEN list this week lives here and has been a member for 2 years is not the same Jose Alvarez who is a government official of Panama who is currently living in Columbia and wanted for laundering.

I'd hate to be responsible for those activities at a large, national or multi-national financial institution. I'd have to spend 24-7 monitoring transactions and doing database scans.

I suppose on the upside is there is a whole industry built around providing compliance materials, consulting, seminars, software, etc as well as actual careers as compliance officers, fraud examiners, etc.

[[AK]Vaxschulah]

Learned an absolutely fascinating history lesson today: None of this has been confirmed, so by all means call BS where you see it!

Prior to ~1989 the American Bar Association supported the concept of it being illegal for lawyers to advertise. They felt it cheapened their profession.

Interesting. I remember occasionally staying home from school sick from 1980-1989 and there were always law firms advertising during. Milivitz and Associates comes to mind. All personal injury lawers. I wonder if they were bucking the trend or if this is BS. It was on channel 9 KMSP out of Minneapolis. Strange how I remember that.

[[AK]Azalyn]

You see the fallout from this stuff in the construction industry as well. Crappy lawsuits lead to new restrictions in the UBC(universal Building Code). In California it is completely ridiculous at times. Some codes are justified, i.e. that bars on a fence or railing can't be greater than 4 inches apart (so kids can't stick their heads through and get them stuck). Whereas other codes just don't make sense, such as Electrical breakers have to be installed and made by the same company as the Electrical breaker box. There used to be about 4 other companies that made all types of breakers that would fit other makers boxes, those companies have gone out of business now because they don't make the electrical breaker boxes. As a contractor, California is the craziest place to work. you never know when an inspector will come up and tell you something is wrong because of a new law passed last week. I see this as stemming from the belief in america that no one is responsible for their own stupidity and the fact that they will all sue you just to get the court to agree, and honestly they do.