If I read one more column about how lawyers are the scum of the earth...Lawyers are in the business of vindicating rights. Ideally, a lawyer does not take a case that she believes to be without merit. Certainly there are unscrupulous practitioners, interested only in racking up fees, but these people exist within every profession, even the righteous journalists (and do you honestly think that dragging someone's name through the mud without benefit of actual fact-finding is not force?). There are safeguards in place within our system that seek to prevent or discourage the filing of frivolous lawsuits; for example, a lawyer can be subject to contempt citation or even disbarment, and, in many circumstances, a plaintiff will be required to put up a bond to cover litigation expenses in case he is not ultimately successful. If these sanctions are not imposed often enough for your taste, that's perhaps something to take up with individual judges. But to paint all lawyers, or even just all lawyers involved in class actions, with the same bullying brush is unfair to a group of people who, by and large, just want to see justice done.

I enjoyed your article on lawyer Bullies. One particular despicable area of gross abuse of homeowner rights is in homeowners association private governmnent principalities. Lawyers enforce CC&Rs with fees coming from homeowner assessments while the homeowner must ante up $$$ to sue against HOA board abuse. Board abuse runs rampant among many HOAs because the directors and attorneys know 1) 80% of the homeowners wil not sue because of finances 2) the CC&RS are adhesion "contracts" that favor HOAs, and 3) the state laws mimick these CC&Rs and do not provide for enforcement of state laws when violated by HOA boards. Homeowners have not been given the full story on the surrender of their rights to HOA private governments operating outside constitutional protections -- there are no downside warnings like the securities Red Herring requirements.

Read more at http://pvtgov.wordpress.com/ and my website http://pctgov.org.
George K. Staropoli
602-228-2891