Now and then events converge to remind us of how often plaintiffs’ lawyers pervert our lawsuit industry for personal and political gain, under the indulgent eyes of judges, without rectifying any injustices, at the expense of the rest of us.
We have recently witnessed the spectacle of three of the nation’s richest and most famous plaintiffs’ lawyers heading to federal prison for various criminal frauds. More on them later. First, let’s consider an especially egregious case that the Supreme Court allowed on May 12, for lack of a quorum, to move ahead in lower federal courts. These consolidated lawsuits, which are seeking more than $400 billion from companies that did business in South Africa during apartheid, score high on what I call Taylor’s Index of Completely Worthless Lawsuit Indicators:
• The lawsuits will do victims of wrongdoing little or no good.
• They will penalize no human being who has done anything wrong.
• They will deter more conduct that is beneficial than harmful.
• The legal costs and any damages will come at the expense of the general public.
• The lawsuits therefore serve no purpose at all but to enrich lawyers and provide ideological power trips for some judges as well as lawyers.
A weakly reasoned federal Appeals Court decision in the apartheid case has the additional defects of thumbing its nose at the Supreme Court and insulting the current, democratically elected government of South Africa, which is led by victims of apartheid.
American Isuzu Motors v. Ntsebeza is a class action purporting to represent all of the more than 20 million black South Africans who were held down by the brutal apartheid regime between 1948 and 1994. The claimed $400 billion would come from more than 50 of the big American and multinational companies that usually end up in the dock when plaintiffs’ attorneys are looking for deep pockets to pick.
