What's wrong with lawyers?

As a class, there is nothing wrong with lawyers. The study of law is a noble profession which provides an invaluable service.

The vast majority of lawyers spend their working days in their office, with their staff, poring through law books in an effort to guide some client through the maze that is our legal code. We could hardly survive without them.

Somewhere between 1787, when The Constitution was offered and, say 2010 when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed, we forgot how to craft laws briefly written and easily understood.

But then, as John Adams said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” We do indeed seem to have slipped from a lofty position of morality and religious fervor, so perhaps all the whys and wherefores and what-ifs, and WTFs are needed.

Another group of lawyers spend their working days in courtrooms, trying to assure that accused persons' rights are protected. A right so valuable, it is protected by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution. In fact, our Founding Fathers, familiar with the commonly unjust treatment of the accused, devoted 40% of the Bill of Rights (4 of the 10 amendments) to the rights of persons charged with law-breaking. Again, defense lawyers are important to our freedoms-they are indispensable.

Growing up on the farm we planted potatoes. When the harvest was complete, we stored a lot of potatoes in a bin in our fruit cellar. They lasted well into the winter, but you had to monitor that bin. If one potato turned bad, that 'bad' quickly spread to other potatoes. Must have been some sort of bacteria, generally the source of stink everywhere from roadkill to sewage treatment plants!

Some lawyers are like the bad potatoes. Their stink can taint the entire profession. They are the lawyers who use their knowledge of the law and their rhetorical skills to persuade juries to make obscenely large cash awards to people they successfully portray as 'victims'. These lawyers, of course, pocket a large percent of the cash.

Think medical malpractice lawsuits. Or, the case of the woman who received a pile of cash because she bought a cup of hot coffee at a drive-thru window, then spilled it on herself.

My personal beef was lawsuits against aircraft manufacturers. During World War II, many of us first experienced flying in an aircraft. After discharge, we took flying lessons and hoped to buy our own light aircraft. Then, lawyers began suing aircraft manufacturers and soon liability insurance exceeded the cost of the aircraft. Result? The market dried up and manufacturers just quit making small, low-cost aircraft.

On the farm, we found the 'bad' potatoes and tossed them out of the bin. When will we do the same with bad lawyers?