As President-elect Barack Obama is in his initial days of his presidency, we Americans continue to experience the devastating effects of decades of deregulation of our financial markets and of industries central to our economy, not to mention the years of steady funding cuts to government watchdog agencies designed to protect the rights and safety of individual consumers. From Enron to the importation of dangerous toys and tainted foodstuffs, from the sub-prime mortgage crisis to Bear Stearns, AIG and Bernard Madoff – what we see at the core of countless scandals in recent years is the tragic legacy of excessive deregulation to the detriment of the public interest.
The incoming Obama administration has the opportunity to change the course of that downward deregulatory spiral and revive the salutory role of regulations and norms, which even some fiscal conservatives, and registered Republicans like myself, believe to be necessary if our economy and financial markets are to function properly to the benefit of American businesses and the American public, and ultimately the American economy.
Even so, such a course of action alone will hardly be sufficient to stem the steady erosion that has occurred over decades in the protection and defense of the rights of the individual and consumers in our society. What separates the United States from many developing nations is our well developed and generally reliable, fair, and independent judiciary. As an institution, an efficient and effective United States' civil justice system is the cornerstone of our first-world status that separates us from other economically or militarily powerful countries.
Chronic underfunding of the federal and state court system and prevelant misguided attacks on those diligently defending the rights of those who have been unfairly harmed undermine our civil justice system and threaten both the safety and economic well being of every American. Instead, we should be supporting an appropriate level of funding for courts and judges at both the federal and state level and we should oppose the economically inspired attempts at tort-reform that will destroy our civil justice system which serves precisely as the last and best protective defense of our individual and collective rights as consumers.
Now more than ever before, America needs a well-funded and vibrant court system. Why is this so urgent today? Three good reasons, made evident by our ongoing national financial and economic crisis, come to mind immediately:
Mortgage foreclosures – the millions of Americans losing their homes today include untold numbers whose initial loans were illegally structured with ineffective, non-compliant disclosures or who may be victims of hasty and illegal foreclosure proceedings, pushed through courtrooms overwhelmed by the sheer volume of filings. Shouldn't individuals faced with the loss of their homes have recourse to an effective well-funded court system and qualified attorneys to assert their rights against possible injustices in the foreclosure process?
Unemployment -- millions of Americans are today losing their jobs or having their hours and benefits cut, but under the constant mind-numbing barrage of negative financial and economic headlines few bother to question how many of those layoffs or reduction of hours or benefits have occurred outside the bounds of state and federal labor legislation. Wage and salary earners who believe they've been wronged need access to properly functioning courts and trial attorneys to help them assert their most basic workplace rights.
Financial malfeasance -- those who may have lost fortunes with financiers such as Bernard Madoff are just the "tip of the iceberg," with millions of small investors having lost years of careful savings and cautious retirement investments that were to see them through old age. These small investors deserve access to a functioning justice system that encourages them to assert their rights toward recovery of some portion of their monies lost through negligence or malfeasance of fund operators and money managers.
Congress and State legislatures need to vigorously pursue the adequate funding of trial and appellate court systems at the State and Federal levels to ensure that Americans seeking to avail themselves of the judicial process are not hamstrung by underbudgeted court systems. At the same time, both the general public and the trial lawyers of this country have roles to play that can make the courts once again a trusted and honored venue for vindication of our rights as individuals and consumers.
The American people need to re-examine and dispense with the uni-dimensional attorney-bashing stereotype of trial lawyers as money-grubbing ambulance chasers that has been steadily fed to them over the years by special interests. It's time for the public to recognize and to give credit where credit is due -- in our deregulated last quarter century, it has been trial lawyers working through the courts who have most consistently stood up as the last line of defense for consumer and individual rights against those seeking unchecked profit and gain.
In this time of crisis, trial lawyers can also help by dispensing with the legal billing "meter" that the public perceives to be always running in the background when it comes to basic information about consumer and individual rights and their protection, making as much of that basic information available to the general public as possible. Attorneys who actively promote informing the public of their rights in areas that include those mentioned above will be seen as providing an invaluable public service, helping both to improve the sometimes tainted image of the legal profession and to stand it in good stead with the American public for years to come.
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Curtis Wolfe, an attorney who lives in Miami, is President and CEO of Boca Raton-based Internet startup, WhoCanISue.com.
