John Rice Carter: “Absolutely, absolutely. You have to stand in line a lot longer to see him than to sue him. This other fellow, friend of…”

“Absolutely, absolutely. You have to stand in line a lot longer to see him than to sue him. This other fellow, friend of mine, was a cigarette smoker, and this was back many years ago. He was sitting there. He is a prolific reader. He said, I have decided how I am going to retire as soon as I get out of college. This was back when I was in college. I said, okay, John, how are you going to retire? He said, well, I read an article that said that the reason people smoke is because they were weaned too soon. He said, so I smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. At that time cigarettes cost about 35 cents a pack. He would get rich today on his plan. He said, so I have added up how many packages of cigarettes I think I am going to smoke in my lifetime, and I happen to know the reason my mother weaned me soon is because her doctor gave her that advice. He said, so I am going to sue my mother and my doctor because I smoke. He said, and I think I can get $1 million out of that deal, by the way, by my calculation. That was a joke, but it does underlie how people view the court systems and the lawsuits that people perceive that can be heard. Now we are having people wanting to sue hamburger people for obesity. They are wanting to sue schools for the vending machines that are in the schools, and of course, they are suing the doctors for everything under the sun. It is amazing. It is absolutely amazing. I think what we will do here is let us just open this up to a general discussion.…”