Newsletter: December 1, 2005
Have you ever wondered just how much you are worth? I'm not talking about how much you might make
an hour, but exactly how much is your life worth? As strange as it might sound, there are packs of
lawyers who are sitting around waiting for you do die a certain way so they can sue some company for
millions of dollars. They love it when you smoke, or take prescription drugs because when you die,
they have a perfect reason to go for the big bucks!
Now call me a cynic, but I haven't met too many people who are actually worth millions of dollars,
either alive OR dead. As strange as it might sound, a company might pay me $40K a year to work for
them, but if my aspirin pills kill me, then I might be worth a few million! Don't get me wrong here.
I feel bad for those people who have tragedies in their lives, but is the lawsuit lottery really an
answer to making things better? From what I've seen, it just raises insurance, taxes and the cost of
just about every product that you can purchase.
I might be a bit skewed in my thinking because my own father worked for the City Attorney's Office in
San Jose. Their office is the one that defends the city against the multitude of people who decide to
sue San Jose for one reason or another. Of course there are some legitimate claims, but many of the
"victims" are suing because of their own stupidity. They might have tripped on the sidewalk, or ignored the lights
and siren on an emergency vehicle or decided to fight a police officer.
One of the more famous lawsuits was just settled this week in San Jose where the family of a Vietnamese
woman was paid $1.8 million after she was shot by police officers in 2003. The officers responded to
a complaint that the family's infant child was wandering unprotected in the street and when they
came into the house, the woman attacked them with what appeared to be a knife. It turned out that
it was merely a peeler of some sort, and when the woman was shot, the Vietnamese community claimed
racism.
The lawyers took over and after two years of arbitration, the value of $1.8M was put in place "for the
future of the children" who were left without a mother. If you look at the breakdown of the settlement,
you'll also see that $630,000 in attorney's fees will be removed from the money that is supposed to
help the children. It would appear that determining a person's value in tragedy is a pretty expensive
process!
Two things strike me as odd in this story. Even though the details of exactly what happened in that
house are in question, I do know that the officer who pulled the trigger did not go to work that day
hoping to shoot down a Vietnamese woman for fun. When the peeler was shown on television, it was not
what I expected. It was very large and in an unknown environment, I would also have defended myself
if I was in that situation. Even so, the whole story is a sad one for everyone involved... Except for
the lawyers who wanted to provide for the innocent children. If they were so worried about the kids,
then one third of the payout would not be going to them!
The strange thing about all of this is that all of us are going to die of something. If you die of
old age, you're worth nothing, but if you manage to die in just the right way, you're a winning lottery
ticket for a bunch of lawyers and maybe a few family members. It's no mystery to me that if I smoke, it
might make me sick. If I walk in the city, I might trip on something. If I attack the police, they
might shoot me. There's no mystery in any of this for me. I just hope that if I die doing something
stupid, it doesn't earn more for some lawyer than I would have earned doing real work for an entire
lifetime!
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