I love reading my local news. The Orange County Register does a good job covering local business affairs. Jan Norman, covering small business, is a fantastic reporter. She is objective and fair. But I have a little beef with her recent article, “Business survey ranks Calif. 47th in lawsuit climate.”
The article is about a survey conducted by the U.S. Chamber Institute of Legal Reform (ILR), a national lobby group for big business. According to ILR’s website:
The (ILR) is a national campaign, representing the nation’s business community, with the critical mission of making America’s legal system simpler, fairer and faster for everyone.
Further down the page it states:
ILR aims to neutralize plaintiff trial lawyers’ excessive influence over the legal and political systems.
This is a ridiculous position. Plaintiff lawyers are consistently the underdogs representing the little guys. In general, they don’t have millions of dollars to throw at cases like the lawyers who were surveyed by ILR. Moreover, plaintiff lawyers don’t have the lobbying power that Corporate America has in Federal and State legislatures.
Read more after the jump….
