Political Quotes

“here we go again. There are people who hate trial lawyers just intuitively and instinctively. I guess the fact that I used to be one before I was elected to the House of Representatives, I kind of take exception to that observation. But I can recall times in my legal practice when people would walk into my office who were literally dirt poor. They didn't have any money. They had been injured, or they had some claim. And, frankly, the only opportunity they had to go to court was if an attorney said, ``OK, we will take it on a contingency-fee basis. If we can win the case, then you pay a part of the winnings. If we don't win, you don't pay anything.'' Contingency fee, trial lawyers--for a lot of people, it is their only ticket to the courthouse. Who in the world can come up with $50,000 or $100,000 to pay some lawyer or some legal firm when they need representation? A lot of Americans just can't do that. So this is really a system of justice which gives the plaintiff a ticket to the door of the courthouse on a contingent basis: ``If we win, you pay the lawyer. If we lose, the lawyer gets nothing.'' Take the case of the tobacco companies. Imagine, if you will, 42 State attorneys general who said, ``We want to sue the tobacco companies, the largest corporations in America, the most politically powerful, a group that never loses a lawsuit. How are we going to do that?'' You can't stop the business of representing the attorney general of Illinois or California.…”