Maybe Shakespeare's character had it right in King Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene II. ("The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.")
Yesterday I woke up at the Hilton Garden Inn in Norwalk, Connecticut, and on my way out I stopped at the breakfast buffet and asked the cook to do a couple of eggs for me, sunny side up, please. He told me he was no longer allowed to prepare eggs sunny side up, and had to do them over easy, instead. He seemed to think this was a new law or state regulation, although I suppose it might just have been HGI policy, promulgated by their attorneys to avoid liability for salmonella poisoning.
Sheesh! First they eliminate high dives from pools, and then they eliminate ALL diving boards. I love diving boards. Now they take away sunny side eggs. I love sunny side eggs. What's next? Bicycling without a helmet? Golfing without protective eye wear? Why have we allowed ourselves to be so bullied by the tort lawyer-industrial complex?
It seems to me that the tort law system in this country has predisposed the whole social and economic system to eschew long-term value and to focus exclusively on short-term costs. Our legal system makes a mockery of balanced and prudent actions by individuals.
When I was a kid, I went through a phase of wanting to grow up to be a lawyer. I used to admire lawyers. But now our very cumbersome American-style tort system has become not just a burden on our economy, adding billions of dollars in unproductive costs to health care and stifling innovation, but it has also diminished our very lifestyles - taking away our freedom simply to live as we choose and do as we please.
In a recently released book - Nudge, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein - there is an excellent discussion of the tremendous extra cost placed on our health care system by the simple fact that people in this country are not allowed to waive the right to sue for damages (see Chapter 14). The courts (also run, mostly, by lawyers) do not allow you to sign such a waiver, and if you do sign one, then court decisions have held that it is not valid. Obviously, lawyers think that only other lawyers are capable of protecting people from themselves. And lawyers own "the system" in this country. We are a country overrun by lawyers. We're infested with them.
The English system, in which the losing party in tort litigation has to pay all court costs, seems at least to diminish the volume of frivolous and costly cases. Maybe we should consider it. I just want my eggs back.