See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation

by Thomas Geoghegan

Book Overview

While just about everyone agrees that we've become a lawsuit nation, is it really class actions by a coterie of private trial lawyers whose enormous settlements and, in Karl Rove's words, "junk lawsuits" that are subverting democracy? Thomas Geoghegan, whom Time called "a modern-day Quixote of the legal profession," thinks not.

In this impassioned rebuttal to Philip K. Howard's The Death of Common Sense, Geoghegan deftly shows...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1595580999
• ISBN13: 9781595580993
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Another masterpiece

We all know conservatism killed something. It's just hard for us to put our finger on exactly what. We smell it, we feel it, we taste it--how the elementary particles of civilization, the very molecules that join together our social life, have been breaking down. But, not being molecular physicists, we somehow can't describe it, can't name it. You have to be really, really smart, pay extraordinary attention to the tiniest details, to do that. Tom Geoghegan? He's our molecular physicist. In his daily work as a lawyer for people screwed by the new American order--employees fired for joining a union, losing their pensions, replaced by younger workers that companies can pay less; working mothers whose daily life is monopolized by harassment from collection agencies; retirees sued for debts they didn't even know they owed--he's gathered the evidence to make sense of all that does not make sense. So read Tom Geoghegan. For those who haven't had time for See You in Court--let alone his other masterpieces, Which Side Are You On? (1991), The Secret Lives of Citizens, and In America's Court (2002)--I'm pleased to provide Cliff Notes. Read this. I'll wait. Back yet? Good. You're hooked. So what's the argument? In the world Ronald Reagan gave us, "More and more people experience the law as arbitrary." Our work lives, even if we weren't necessarily in unions, were bounded by stable, transparent, easily enforceable contracts. Now we sign "employee handbooks" that look like labor contracts used to look--"but on page 100 it says: 'Nothing herein is enforceable.' Warning: This is not a contract. We take job because of promised "lifetime" benefits that get cut off with a week's warning. Here's a classic Geoghegan aperçus, what he sees every day in the trenches among his working class clients: "With no early retirement and no funded pension based on thirty years and out, the only way 'out' for people now is to fight to get on Social Seurity disability.... Disability is the new kind of welfare, a kind of AFDC for older men. We got young single mothers off welfare, and we have older men on instead.... And they aren't faking. People really are sick. It's the stress of not having a pension or a retirement. To keep taking on stress is an unconscious way of trying to put yourself out of business. It's a call for help. Or maybe it's despair." I guess that's why Geoghegan's books don't become bestsellers: most of us would prefer to avert our eyes from the spectacle of old men working themselves near to death, intentionally, because it's the only way they can imagine a secure and stable environment. Of course we avert our eyes: we let it happen. "Over the last thirty years, we have made big changes in the law. But to all these big changes, there has been no real consent." What happened? Instead of contracts, we have tort--suing people for perceived wrongs. That got rid of an efficient, predictable, cheap method for settling disputes. "People scream over something fo

Law for the nonlawyer

I have read and loved all of Tom Geoghegan's books because of Tom's search for a commonsense morality that can applied to the problems of our time. See You in Court extends that search to the way that the law has crept into most transactions in life. Geoghegan takes on the explosion of court cases and their effect on our innate sense of justice which has been mainly detrimental. This development is paradoxical when we reflect on the great numbers of people,many like Tom, who went to law school with the idea of somehow contributing to a better society while being able to make a reasonable living. How did we end up the situation we find ourselves in now where a lucky few hit it big with large jury driven settlements and everyone else is stuck with little recourse when faced with routine injustice? Tom Geoghegan's fearless exploration of these issues is enlightening. Some reviewers decry the lack of a more typical legal academic framework, wincing at Geoghegan's self revelations which are rarely flattering to Geoghegan,contrary to the practice of most authors. But it is exactly this type of examination, self and otherwise, that makes this book a good entree for nonlawyers. If you care about justice,both lofty and as it exists (or doesn't) in the everyday, this is a highly worthwhile book. Geoghegan takes law ouside the courtroom and private negotiations to speculate on how and why we ended up with the sytem we have today. He points to possible solutions, though that is not the real purpose of the book. Instead he describes the problem, provokes our sympathy and ire, and asks us to look at a far bigger picture in seeking solutions. LIke all the Geoghegan books, you will find yourself, "talking back" to the book, internally debating his theses and mulling over the stories. Once a Geoghegan book enters your consciousness, it rarely leaves. And isn't that the best reason to read?

Re-making the Rule of Law in America

There is no index; there are no notes, no citations of sources. With its fanciful writing, its humor and stretched arguments, at times it seems like fiction. But underneath it is serious non-fiction, designed to provoke attention to the important subject of the state of the American legal system. Goeghegan discusses change in the law, particularly what he describes as a shift from contract law to torts, and the impact this has had on the litigation rate. What is significant, whether you buy his thesis or not, is that he emphasizes political reasons for the change, primarily deregulation brought about by the political right. This is in contrast to the tack taken by many current critics to the effect that judges (almost alone) have fuzzed up the law to such an extent that there is no certainty, leading to a lottery mentality and a rise in litigation; and that lawyers generally are to blame for filing too many lawsuits. His thesis extends to charging that in the areas such as workers' pensions and non-profit hospitals, the lack of "trust" law, or a contractual fiduciary obligation, necessarily leads to more and nastier litigation because there are no longer clear contract-type rules in place to protect legitimate interests. Although the book refers to European and other nations as doing a better job of limiting litigation, it could benefit from additional reference to comparative law studies that describe the trade-off: those countries have a lot more beaucratic government control of pensions, medicine, etc., leaving much less to litigate. While this supports his thesis, it ignores the issue of the price that is paid. As you read on, you wonder who is the intended audience. The treatment of legal matters is not what most lawyers would want to see. For example, the author likes class actions, and gives good reasons for them. But he decries the Class Action Fairness Act as making it impossible to resolve national matters in one suit, never mentioning that a primary feature of the Act is to remove such cases from state court to federal court, where they would then be handled. He mentions 100,000 federal civil filings per year (the 2006 figures indicate about 180,000 civil filings, excluding prisoner petitions) but doesn't mention the roughly 7,500,000 civil filings in the state courts of general jurisdiction. He pushes for more "model" law, and a rendering of common law into statutory law. He's not very keen on the judges, saying that their opinions come from the facts that they regard as important. In this regard, he is in line with the old legal realist criticisms of judges, and perhaps the more conventional assault on our legal system. But while his ideas and observations may trouble lawyers on the left as well as on the right, the range of subjects examined gives the nonlawyer lots to think about. Geoghegan closes with his insistence on the value of the law, and in particular a more predictable Rule of Law. He equates a public emphasis on and de