A few months ago I blogged about the famous McDonald’s coffee case, one of the most recognized personal injury lawsuits in America. This story has been back in the news lately because HBO is airing a documentary called Hot Coffee.
It was this case that led to the formation of a collective belief based on a public relations campaign that many personal injury lawsuits are “frivolous”.
Unfortunately, this corporate publicity campaign succeeded: now many Americans wrongly believe that those who injure or kill people, or commit medical malpractice, shouldn’t have to be held accountable because there are too many “frivolous lawsuits” clogging up the justice system and causing insurance rates to rise.
Big corporations and insurance companies try to run down our civil justice system because it pads their bottom line to not have to pay for their wrongdoing. Those efforts not only harm people but they harm a foundational tenant of our American society.
Under the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the great state of Oregon, each of us has a sacred right to have our day in court. As a personal injury attorney who has sought justice for the family of an elderly woman who was dropped from a lift at a nursing home and left to writhe in pain by nursing home workers and finally die five days later, for a construction worker who sustained and injury that left him paralyzed from the chest down because of negligent subcontractors, for the family of a man who died when he was struck by a drug-induced semi-truck driver, I believe that everyone deserves their day in court.
When I represent an injured person, I am not only fighting to hold the wrongdoer accountable but a civil justice system that has been the envy of the world since our nation’s founding.
Don’t be fooled into siding with wrongdoers over injured victims.
