Everybody Hurts

They’re funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you’re having them.

Eeyore, “The House at Pooh Corner”

They are not funny things, accidents. In my experience, planes have fallen out of the sky when they are not supposed to. Cars can erupt in flames on unexpected high-speed impacts. Patients stop breathing when their anesthesia is wrong. Children are born to a life of struggle if their distress at birth is not addressed appropriately. Products that fail can cause disfiguring harm, pain, and death.

These are not pleasant things to consider. Maybe you can imagine the difficulty of devoting yourself to fashioning imperfect remedies for these accident injuries. Maybe not. It takes a special kind of person – like Pooh – to keep your head when all about you is upside down.

But these things happen. Nobody is immune. It isn’t healthy to think about at all times but none of us knows what waits for us around the corner. Which has always made the hostility of some toward lawsuits peculiar to me – do politicians who rail against trial lawyers understand that their parents could die of a horrible death of sepsis from untreated pressure ulcers? Do talking heads on the television who mock lawsuits understand that they might need the help of a professional? Do journalists, editors and publishers who try to scandalize verdicts care that their own family might one day need a jury trial to repair a serious loss? Would they refuse to stand up for themselves or would they hire the best lawyer they could find?