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Tort plaintiffs don’t have the best reputation. Think of the often-mocked woman who sued McDonald’s after she was burned by its coffee in 1992. Or, more recently, the case of one woman who sued after being overserved tequila on a Carnival cruise. She then was hurt when she fell, and sued the cruise line to recover for her injuries; the jury awarded her a six-figure judgment. When people hear about cases like this, is it any wonder that many have such negative opinions about attorneys?

But lawyers and lawsuits have also achieved stunning gains on behalf of the average consumer. Think of the tobacco litigation that publicized how cigarettes were poisoning Americans—a fact that Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds well knew even as they collected profits. A Ford Pinto lawsuit helped bring to light the design flaw that was igniting cars and burning people to death. Asbestos lawsuits have helped to provide some compensation to mesothelioma victims. Even the McDonald’s lawsuit involved a real victim and a real injury, an elderly woman who was hospitalized for eight days after receiving third-degree burns, needing to receive skin grafts—and she was injured after McDonald’s had already received over 700 reports of customer injuries from the extreme temperatures at which it served its coffee.

Certainly, not all litigation is perfect. Some lawyers, in fact, can and do take advantage of tort victims in order to line their own........

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