Why we fight, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

As voters mull the stakes in this year's election, here's an issue that ought to ring alarms in the ears of serious people: tort reform. After 20 years of state and federal efforts to reform a runaway legal system, the trial bar is reviving the monster....States had been making progress: New laws cleaned up venue requirements, reformed punitive and noneconomic damages, and enacted medical malpractice reform. So-called "judicial hellholes" like Texas and Mississippi have seen insurers return and premiums fall.

The trial bar is fighting back, with success. In last year's legislative session, Michigan lawmakers proposed repealing safeguards for prescription drug providers; Maryland legislators wanted to revoke medical liability reforms; and Florida's legislature entertained the nullification of its joint and several liability reforms. The trial bar's big coup was in Colorado, where Democratic Governor Bill Ritter signed a law increasing previous limits on noneconomic damages.

Lawyers have also been laboring to create opportunities for more lawsuits, more money and more time to sue. Last year, Alabama saw legislation that would allow a tort claim to continue even after a plaintiff had died, while California proposed authorizing lawsuits for any violation of privacy. New Mexico and New Jersey passed laws authorizing citizens to file "false claims" suits on behalf of the state -- in effect turning private individuals into state bounty hunters....Four states -- Colorado, Washington, Illinois and Texas -- considered proposals to increase the size of awards plaintiffs could claim, and with it attorneys' contingency fees. The tort bar pushed bills across the country to expand "consumer protection" damages and in at least three states to allow plaintiffs to claim damages for "emotional harm" when their pets are injured. In Maryland and Oregon, lawyers successfully shepherded new laws to extend the time in which plaintiffs could file lawsuits.

As much as the trial lawyers want to claim that they are pursuers of justice, righting wrongs and protecting victims the above article, and this post, and this website, clearly show their interest lies strictly in expanding their "market", economic consequences be damned.  As one trial lawyer reminds us:

"Earning money in the practice of law requires you be in the trial mode or the litigation machine shuts down."

And what a litigation machine it is. The Department of Labor reports that lawyers held about 761,000 jobs in 2006, or to put it another way, in 2006 there was one lawyer for every two engineers.  Given the trial bar's wish list of unlimited time to sue for unlimited damages on an unlimited scope, we have to ask ourselves: Is this really the America we want? Because it is certainly not the America we need.