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Did you realize that most of the improvements in safety in this country are the result of independant judges and citizen juries holding unscrupulous, reckless and often greedy people and corporations responsible for what they do?

Ford Motor Company didn’t recall the Ford Pinto even though the corporate executives knew that the gas tank would explode and kill people in low impact collisions. That case made the entire auto industry change their standards.

Lawsuits by AOAO condominiums and homeowners against builders who substitute cheap building materials and junk design shortcuts in their buildings, have forced them to reconsider their greed in putting profits over people.

Pharmaceutical corporations that make billions of dollars on drugs that they know will maim or kill unknowing consumers, children and senior citizens – like the drugs Thalidomide and Vioxx – have had an easy time skirting the Food & Drug Administration regulations. But lawsuits by families that have suffered have restrained this corporate greed.

Doctors and hospitals that are careless, poorly trained or under-staffed have been made to re-think the effect of their carelessness on their patients by people who make them take responsibility for their negligence before a jury of neutral citizens.

Airplanes and their pilots have been made safer by lawsuits that expose outrageous negligence.

Our mission to keep our families safe.

And does this all increase the cost of products, insurance and your cost of living? Every study of this subject has given a resounding answer: NO !

Responsible companies, doctors and people are not the targets of lawsuits.

Lawyers protect the rule of law, protect individual rights and stand up against the abuse of individual, corporate and government power. Without law, society has no stability and corruption is unstoppable. Without citizen juries and an independant judiciary the people have no place to seek justice.

We are problem solvers – not trouble makers. We consider it a privilege to make the world a safer place for all Americans through your cases.

The often misunderstood quote from Shakespeare’s play Henry the 6th is at the heart of what our firm does everyday. In the play a group of evil men plot to take over the government and they all agreed that they could not succeed unless: “First let’s kill all the lawyers”. Lawyers stand up for the rule of law, the constitution and civil rights. In America the attacks on lawyers come from those same sources: corporations and insurance companies that put profits over people.

We have a message for those who want to take unfair advantage of you: “Not while we are here !”

One of my great heros is the late Teddy Koskoff from Connecticut. All of his life he was a civil trial lawyer. All of his life he worked on behalf of the little person. He was also the President of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the greatest association of lawyers in the world. ATLA has 50,000 member lawyers who only represent people and who refuse to represent corporations and insurance companies against individuals. I am proud to say that I have been on the Board of Governors of ATLA since 1990.

Teddy Koskoff defined lawyers with power and with poetry. I have added a little and subtracted a little, but I borrow many of his words.

He said, If you are a lawyer, you stand between the abuse of corporate power and the individual. If you are a lawyer, you stand between the abuse of governmental power and the individual. If you are a lawyer, you are the hair shirt to the smugness and the complacency of society. And if you are a lawyer, you are helping to mold the rights of individuals for generations to come.

If you think about those who have been part of the legal professional heritage, your thoughts would, I think, turn to some of these.

A Philadelphian in New York, the first Philadelphia lawyer, who undertook the defense of John Peter Zinger to protect his right to publish what he chose free from censorship or interference. His name was Andrew Hamilton. And he was a lawyer.

You would see him at the trial of Captain Preston, another political trial; a trial that arose out of the Boston Massacre. His name was John Adams. And he was a lawyer.

You would see him at that miracle in Philadelphia, the Constitutional Convention of 1787, fighting for the bill of Rights which became the basis of American freedom. His name was James Madison. He was a lawyer.

Courtesy Wayne Parsons Law Offices

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