What's up with all the Law Firm adverts on American TV?
 

I live in Toronto ON and we get Fox TV from Buffalo NY. After prime time all the commercial spots are filled with adverts for one solicitor or another - if you were in an accident...if you caused the accident...if you lost this...or got sick with that. Makes it seem like everyone in the city is suing each other.

Well, Americans do sue one another much more often than most other countries. If I remember correctly (and this is borne out by the liability rates I follow for a living), Canadians are a distant second but may soon get outpaced by the British.

There's another area where we're unique to the world, I think. Lawyers are allowed to advertise aggresively. That seems to not be the case elsewhere (at least in my travels by my recollection). We also have "class action" law suits where folks are grouped together to right a perceived wrong. Some of these ("Erin Brockovich") are the only way to keep major corporations honest, but some (the Mississippi silica case) are flagrant money-grabs by lawyers, who get 33% of any settlement.

One of the reasons I'm against tort reform is that most options would remove the right to file suit by people who have been wronged. Products fail or are poorly designed. Unless and until medical bankruptcy is no longer the only option, I can't see any legitimate reason for tort reform.

/soapbox

You're probably watching during the day, too. I've noticed that those ads go way up during the day--presumably targeting injured workers who now spend their days watching daytime television, the poor sorry bastards.

Also, to add onto what Jazz wrote, the Tort law industry has replaced door to door salesmen in their possible profitability ratios. In other words, lawsuits make more money.

I watched 4 commercials in a row on an American station all advertising various prescription medications - fat loss, limp dick syndrome, a heart medication and something else.

Try getting out and exercising and stop eating all those donuts you flabby bastards and you wouldn't need half this stuff!

I do not believe you are correct about this. Most options would not "remove the right to sue." The proposed tort reform I'm familiar with only limits damages (to $1,000,000) and/or enacts a loser pays rule.

I remember when the ban on lawyer advertising was lifted. In the beginning it was shocking to Americans as well. In those days practicing law was still seen as a noble profession by many people. Advertising has helped change that view. In national surveys, lawyers are held to the same high esteem as used car salesmen and politicians. It's no coincidence that many politicians are lawyers.

I must have missed the announcement about how Tim Horton's is good for you.

I find it ironic that the third post in this thread (I think you all can see where his post was deleted) was by a spammer selling some sort of French insurance sceme.

I came back to elaborate on lawyers. The ones that advertise usually have an area of expertise - Workers Compensation (our version of universal healthcare that's a piss-poor substitute), drunk driving, car accidents, etc. These areas are pretty specific and you usually don't see one lawyer doing multiple areas since the laws and (more importantly) the personalities on the other side are different.

In the old days, the pond-scum lawyers (think Denzel Washington's character in "Philadelphia") chased lawyers. Now they advertise. Cuts down on their milage.

---------- Post added at 10:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:39 AM ----------

Sorry for my lazy semantics. The idea would remove the right to sue by making the punishments for losing distasteful or the payout so low that it's not worth it. There are, however, several efforts at reform that completely remove the right to sue unless the plantiff can demonstrate "grievous bodily harm". Since those are the most recent I've seen reported, those are the ones that came to mind.

However, the caps I've seen are much lower (although they vary state-by-state). I've seen product liability caps as low as $25,000 and general bodily injury caps as low as $100,000.

I'll state, as I have many times in the past, that there is no such thing as a "frivolous" lawsuit. There may be some that don't have merit in the eyes of the defendant and there may be some that are downright fraudulent allegations by the plantiff, but those are failures by plantiff attorneys (including plantiff representing themselves) to properly perform their duties as officers of the court.

Canadians are only marginally better than Yanks when it comes to poor eating habits.

The post was not an attack on Americans.

It was merely an observation on US advertising and how people can save themselves thousands in prescriptions and insurance by just getting off their butts and make a nice salad rather than heading down to KFC.

Awwwwww. C'mon! Just last week I got the opportunity to point out to Lucifer that the logical conclusion of his argument was that Canadians smell like feet. Here I was waiting for an epic battle of "my country is better than your country", which would have necessarily ended with my response of "well of course you're right" to yours of "hey, at least our legal system doesn't depend on litigation to force sometimes-innocent corporations to pay the medical bills of the injured. We solve that little issue with universal healthcare."

There you go being all right again. highthief, I have to insist on you stopping all my fun. It's really, um...... no fun. ;)

SNL did a skit making fun of those commercials. I didn't really laugh at first. It was actually months later when I realized how accurate they were with the fake, limp hand gestures and all. Very funny -

And yeah, Fox is overrun with them during the day. It's sad when you begin to recite the commercials by memory. Yay unemployment :/.

we're americans, man. we love to sue people.

think i can get some cash for all the pain and suffering i got from this Guinness scare? i thought the whole damn place had burned down!

There are loads of adverts for injury claims in the UK at the moment. My 'favourite' is one which goes

'Accident: something where you get hurt that isn't your fault'
'Lawyers: people who find those responsible and get the money you deserve'

I want to punch the TV, stupid adverts, i hate them, and the damned injury business.