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The contingent fee is perhaps the one device in law that gives
injured people, no matter what their financial means, an even
break in the courtroom against giant corporations and insurance
companies. Small wonder, then, that it has been under almost constant
attack for 100 years by corporations and insurance companies.
Seldom is heard a discouraging word from the thousands of victims
who were able to retain, on a contingency basis, quality lawyers
who proved a match and more for corporate counsel. In short, the
attacks on the contingent fee system come from the tortfeasors
who have to compensate their victims, not from victims who
have to pay their lawyers. And it is a disingenuous argument.
The tortfeasors never seek limits on their own ability to pay
lawyers or access a defense. They seek only to limit victims.
Their mission is to make the already uneven playing field even
more uneven.
Were it not for the contingent fee, people of the middle class
or of low economic means would not be able to have their day in
court, a constitutional right which corporations and insurance
companies fight hard to eliminate.
Nearly 50 years ago, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan
Stone spoke for all those who have the honor to speak out for
the innocent injured:
"The most elementary conceptions of justice and public
policy require that the wrongdoer shall bear the risk of the
uncertainty which his own wrong has created."
Bigelow v. RKO Radio Pictures, 66 S. Ct. 574, 580 (1946).
More than 30 years ago, Judge Michael A. Musmanno said it best:
"If it were not for contingent fees, indigent victims
of tortious accidents would be subject to the unbridled, self-willed
partisanship of their tortfeasors. The person who has, without
fault on his part, been injured and who, because of his injury,
is unable to work, and has a large family to support, and has
no money to engage a lawyer, would be at the mercy of the person
who disabled him because, being in a superior economic position,
the injuring person could force on his victim, desperately in
need of money to keep the candle of life burning in himself
and his dependent ones, a wholly unconscionably meager sum in
settlement, or even refuse to pay him anything at all. Any society,
and especially a democratic one, worthy of respect in the spectrum
of civilization, should never tolerate such a victimization
of the weak by the mighty."
Richette v. Solomon, 187 A.2d 910, 919 (Pa. 1963).
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