Holy Shit! The John Edwards Trial is Absolutely Unhinged!

[Jason of Dystopia]

I was just reading a story about some of the testimony in the John Edwards trial. This is white trash to the max! His daugter fled the courtroom during the testimony and everything! Good stuff...and what makes it so juicy and pathetic is this guy was almost Vice-President of the United States!

GREENSBORO, N.C. — A former adviser to John Edwards recounted Wednesday how the former presidential candidate's now-deceased wife indignantly confronted her husband, baring her chest in front of staff members the day after a tabloid reported that he was cheating on her.

During a session at Edwards' corruption trial that saw his 30-year-old daughter flee the courtroom in tears, Christina Reynolds described how a very upset Elizabeth Edwards stormed away from her husband in October 2007, then collapsed in a ball on the pavement outside a private airplane hangar. Reynolds and another woman guided the anguished wife into a nearby ladies room to compose herself, but she soon returned to the private hangar to again confront her husband.

In front of several staff members, the woman who had endured grueling treatments for breast cancer took off her shirt and bra, exposing her chest.

"'You don't see me anymore,'" Reynolds quoted Elizabeth Edwards as screaming. "He didn't have much of a reaction."

[zboy1]

John Edwards is a complete pond scum of a human being and he's just like any other lying, corrupt politician out there. Plus, he was a money grubbing trial lawyer, which makes him even more of dirt-bag than he already is.

[gsjackson]

It will be unhinged if they convict this guy essentially for being a bit of a cad. This trial is prosecutorial abuse of discretion gone absolutely haywire. According to the book Game Change, Elizabeth Edwards was an absolutely insufferable harpy at that point in her life, and this episode sounds consistent with that. No one could stand to be around her.

Like virtually all the rest of the Washington pols, Edwards is an egotist who needed to be brought down. But he rightly wonders why he's the one singled out for criminal prosecution, given the serial philandering of Bill Clinton, the charges of homosexual encounters for both Bush 2 and Obama that the media laid off completely, etc., etc., etc. The answer is his wife framed the whole business in a way to make him universally despised, when more likely she was the one who sank the relationship.

[Jason of Dystopia]

Plus, he was a money grubbing trial lawyer, which makes him even more of dirt-bag than he already is.

American Assn for Justice

Formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA), this group of plaintiffs' attorneys and others in the legal profession now goes by the name of the American Association for Justice (AAJ) and boasts 56,000 members worldwide. A lobbying heavyweight, the association has been battling any attempt at tort reform, including recent proposals to cap awards in medical malpractice lawsuits.

According to Open Secrets the trial lawyers are "heavy hitters" in campaign funding. Here's there totals from a chart to show who they supported since 1990:

DEMOCRAT
$31,678,708


REPUBLICAN
$2,959,871


TOTAL %

89% to 8%

[ManInSiam]

delete

[gsjackson]

John Edwards is a complete pond scum of a human being and he's just like any other lying, corrupt politician out there. Plus, he was a money grubbing trial lawyer, which makes him even more of dirt-bag than he already is.

Not quite as disgusting a money-grubber as many of the corporations he successfully sued. The trial lawyers have been successfully demonized by corporate America and their kept media, but please understand what tort "reform" entails. It means that corporations can keep their payments for negligent or intentional infliction of harm manageable. Make infliction of harm just a reasonable cost of doing business. Are their lobbying efforts toward this end more acceptable to you than the trial lawyers' efforts to keep their gravy train from being derailed?

[Jason of Dystopia]

Actually, I think that in a way, Edwards symbolizes what the plaintiff's bar in this country has really become. In his book Four Cases, he sued two doctors and a hospital, the Red Cross, and a pool drain company.

Hospitals, doctors, the Red Cross are evil corporate America?

In all those cases it was quite obvious he used a highly melodramatic court room style to influence the jury. In one case, the judge had to overturn the verdict because Edwards won it w/o sufficient evidence and the judge ruled it was decided "under the influence of passion and prejudice."

He got a verdict from the pool drain company because they didn't have warnings on their drains...even though it was a public official who failed to install the drain correctly.

When you actually look close up at many of the personal injury cases in the U.S., the balance of power is weighted to the plaintiff's bar (trial lawyers), and they can so easily intimidate the "evil corporations" into settlements that the majority of these cases no one ever hears about. Americans should be alarmed at the actual amount of political power trial lawyers have.

Tort reform is a way to balance the scale that is tilted to one side.

It means that corporations can keep their payments for negligent or intentional infliction of harm manageable. Make infliction of harm just a reasonable cost of doing business.

Actually that's not what tort reform means at all. It is obvious you have spent too much time at OWS rape-ins. Tort reform is multifaceted and it is probably way too complicated to get into here but it is in general, yes, an attempt to make the law more favorable to the defense bar. It includes things like appeal bond reform, class action reform, medical liability reform which most everyone (except trial lawyers) admit have been abused.

[gsjackson]

Hospitals, doctors, the Red Cross are evil corporate America?


Tort reform is a way to balance the scale that is tilted to one side.

For-profit hospitals most emphatically yes -- a disturbing development of the last twenty years or so that we can thank crooks like Bill Frist for. They're one of the big reasons for uncontrollable health care costs.

The scales are tilted toward the plaintiff's bar? I just don't see how. Plaintiffs' lawyers are typically solo practitioners or a handful of lawyers banded together with very little funding. Often they front what little money they have, with no guarantee of getting anything back. Contrast that with the financial resources for representation of most corporate defendants. Defendants often can paper plaintiffs' lawyers to death.

Tort reform doesn't balance anything. It simply limits the discretion of triers-of-fact to make awards that they think are fair.

[gsjackson]

What you are talking about here is the practice of punitive damages, because no court of law wants to put a company out of business when a jury awards a plaintiff damages commensurate with their injury. Punitive damages are decided by JURIES and are still, in fact, rare. However, as we see in the Edwards case, a spellbinder with good hair can manipulate a jury to give unjust punitive damages which can harm businesses unfairly.Only OWS idiots want to put corporations out of business for even non-foreseeable harm.

Yes, they are rare, and often overturned on appeal. And yes, juries are often composed of idiots, but that's the system we have. So what is this pressing need for reform that ties the hands of the legal system. Feel free to give examples of Edwards' demagoguery, or other transparent injustices that require this legislative gift to corporate America, which it has sought so diligently for decades. But please don't use the standard old chestnut about the woman who got burned by her coffee at McDonalds. That place had been warned a hundred times their coffee was dangerously hot, and the woman spent a week in the hospital getting skin grafts. Not to have imposed punitive damages in that case would have been a miscarriage of justice.

[Jason of Dystopia]

The scales are tilted toward the plaintiff's bar? I just don't see how. Plaintiffs' lawyers are typically solo practitioners or a handful of lawyers banded together with very little funding

You have obviously been drinking some kool-aid. Some of the biggest law firms in the world are plaintiff's attorneys.

[zboy1]

John Edwards is a complete pond scum of a human being and he's just like any other lying, corrupt politician out there. Plus, he was a money grubbing trial lawyer, which makes him even more of dirt-bag than he already is.

Not quite as disgusting a money-grubber as many of the corporations he successfully sued. The trial lawyers have been successfully demonized by corporate America and their kept media, but please understand what tort "reform" entails. It means that corporations can keep their payments for negligent or intentional infliction of harm manageable. Make infliction of harm just a reasonable cost of doing business. Are their lobbying efforts toward this end more acceptable to you than the trial lawyers' efforts to keep their gravy train from being derailed?

Every other industrialized country in the world has a loser-pay tort system where the loser in a trail ends up paying for the defendants attorneys fees, which in turn, helps to limit the amount of frivolous lawsuits that get tied up in court. In the U.S., frivolous lawsuits are costing businesses billions of dollars in non-sense litigation claims, helping to drive up the cost of health care and insurance fees to unaffordable levels. That, and all these frivolous lawsuits ends up tying up our criminal justice system, while important cases--where real crimes have been committed--get pushed back as a result. In fact, most of the world laughs at and mocks at our hopelessly corrupt and inefficient judicial system!

[Jason of Dystopia]

[Jason of Dystopia]

The Big, Green Litigation Machine

He's fun & frantic & beloved - and may be the most sued mascot in the majors


THE PHILLIE PHANATIC may soon find himself in court - and not just over a stolen base.

The Phanatic has been sued in Philadelphia Civil Court by a 75-year-old woman who claims that he injured her knees when he climbed through the stands at a 2008 Reading Phillies minor league game.

Even the woman's attorney, John Speicher, of Wyomissing, said that people around him have said that "this is like suing Santa Claus."

"I'm expecting him to come to a deposition, stick his stomach and his tongue out at me and not say anything," Speicher said.

The Phanatic is no stranger to lawsuits. In a study published in the May 2002 Cardozo Law Review, Bob Jarvis, professor of sports law at Nova Southeastern University, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said that the Phanatic holds the "dubious record as the most-sued mascot in the majors."




In her case, Grace Crass, of Wernersville, claims that she was at the Reading game with her church group when the massive, green, bird-anteater hybrid climbed through the stands and onto her legs, Speicher said.

"Not only was the pain immediate, she started yelling at him," Speicher said.

Crass claims that her arthritis, which had been asymptomatic, kicked into full gear.

"It set off the arthritic process, and in fairly short order she needed a lot of medical treatment," Speicher said. "Ultimately, she needed to get knee replacements."

Crass is seeking in excess of $50,000 in damages from several defendants including Tom Burgoyne, who plays the Phanatic, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Reading Phillies.

Phillies spokeswoman Bonnie Clark said that both the team and Burgoyne declined to comment on pending litigation. She did question Jarvis' characterization of the Phanatic as the "most-sued mascot in the majors," and said that he's been sued only twice in the last decade.

Daily News records show, though, that the Phanatic was sued at least three times in the decade before that, including once for hugging someone too hard.

Jarvis said that there are several reasons why the Phanatic may be prone to lawsuits, including his longevity. "He's been around so long and performed so many times, he gets sued more than a mascot that's more recent," he said.

The construction of the bulky body of the Galapagos native may also play a factor, he said.

"It's very ungainly, not like some mascots where the person in the suit has a lot of control," he said.

The Phanatic's personality could be another piece of the puzzle.

[gsjackson]

Every other industrialized country in the world has a loser-pay tort system where the loser in a trail ends up paying for the defendants attorneys fees, which in turn, helps to limit the amount of frivolous lawsuits that get tied up in court. In the U.S., frivolous lawsuits are costing businesses billions of dollars in non-sense litigation claims, helping to drive up the cost of health care and insurance fees to unaffordable levels. That, and all these frivolous lawsuits ends up tying up our criminal justice system, while important cases--where real crimes have been committed--get pushed back as a result. In fact, most of the world laughs at and mocks at our hopelessly corrupt and inefficient judicial system!

I believe you're wrong on most every count here. Civil cases, which is what lawsuits are, are not tying up the criminal courts -- "Sorry Mr. Prosecutor, we can't hear your murder trial because somebody slipped on a chewing gum wrapper and we have to hear the suit." They are two entirely different currents of the law.

In every US jurisdiction both courts and Bar associations can sanction attorneys for bringing "frivolous" suits. Court costs are sometimes awarded. If you're saying that the loser should always pay costs of a civil suit, regardless of the merit of the action, then you will ensure that no one except the big money boys have access to the courts. That's certainly what the corporations would like.

And I think you would have a very hard time backing up the statement "frivolous lawsuits are costing businesses billions of dollars..."

I'm not saying our system of personal injury law is ideal. But current tort reform proposals are just pure political payoff by Republicans to their corporate benefactors.

[gsjackson]

The scales are tilted toward the plaintiff's bar? I just don't see how. Plaintiffs' lawyers are typically solo practitioners or a handful of lawyers banded together with very little funding

You have obviously been drinking some kool-aid. Some of the biggest law firms in the world are plaintiff's attorneys.

You could be right. I've just never heard of any, and I've been a member of the Virginia Bar for 24 years, though I haven't practiced in some time. All plaintiffs' lawyers I've ever known were small-time, just like John Edwards was when he started out.