15 Jul 2004

In response to a letter, "Wasn't Honest Abe also a trial lawyer?",defending John Edwards; Syracuse Post-Standard, 12 Jul 2004
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John Edwards is no Abraham Lincoln

To the Editor:

The letter, "Wasn't Honest Abe also a trial lawyer?", on July 12, uses a tired comparison to excuse modern trial lawyers, in this case, VP hopeful John Edwards.

In spite of the common title, "lawyer", John Edwards and Abraham Lincoln had distinctly different occupations.
Abraham Lincoln was a trial lawyer when law was still a profession. Lincoln's respect for the law and his reputation for use of fact and logic* in court on Illinois' 8th Judicial Circuit earned him the nickname "Honest Abe".

In the last fifty years, bringing cases to trial has become a predatory enterprise which attacks industry, the wealthy and the heavily insured.

The worst of the "entrepreneurs" are the trial lawyers who specialize in injury, medical malpractice and other cases where maimed and crippled human beings can be displayed to naïve juries.

The worst of these injury lawyers are the medical malpractice lawyers who are particularly destructive in driving physicians who can't pay the insurance premiums out of business, or at least out of state. They increase cost of medical help; the surgeon or obstetrician who pays a $100,000 yearly insurance premium has to charge an additional $50 per hour to cover it.

Among the worst of these medical malpractice lawyers is John Edwards. Edwards made his fortune of perhaps $60 million specializing in cases of cerebral palsy ostensibly caused by bad decisions by obstetricians at delivery. Edwards won his cases because he could show a crippled child to a jury, claiming that the doctor had injured the child, leaving that doctor the difficult task of proving that he hadn't.

John Edwards is no Abraham Lincoln.
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* Admittedly, Lincoln could argue ad misericordiam with the best (or the worst), but not to support a invalid case.

© 2004 Halway Systems

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