J, lets walk you through a plausible scenario. I’m sure you’ve driven through puddles around Boise after a major rain. When you looked at that puddle you probably figured that the ground beneath that puddle was exactly the same when you last travelled the area. Or that the water doesn’t look that deep. That’s precisely the situation that takes peoples’ lives every year in flash floods. People, maybe not unlike you, through pride and arrogance, believe a situation is not as dangerous as it really is, usually in a hurry to get home and to put the nuisance behind them. Would you believe that its by people who were intimately familiar with the road they were on and the danger flooding posed? Maybe a sign reminding those folks to think twice in that circumstance may prevent the loss of another life.

Now here’s another scenario. A jury is composed of voting citizens just like you endowed with the common sense that the creator provided. A “stupid” person compels his attorney over objections to file a claim that he was not adequately warned when he drove his Mercedes into the water. Now supposing its truly a frivilous claim and somehow survives the umpteen legal challenges to throw the case out and you are empannelled on that jury. What are you going to do as a juror? Throw the case out I’m guessing. Now the attorney has just spent a gazillion hours preparing a case for trial that he has no chance of winning. Sounds like an attorney that won’t be in practice long.

J if you have examples of truly frivilous cases clogging the system let me know. My experience indicates that the system washes them out early on. And J, bikeboy and Mr. Logic, my profession has been demonized for long enough to render “pond scum” a redundancy.

(Regarding pond-scum lawyers… an attorney friend of mine once said, “It’s a shame that a few hundred thousand unscrupulous lawyers can ruin the reputation of ALL of us!”)