Debate Over Lawyers

James P. Pinkerton (“Those Trial Lawyers Never Miss a Trick,” Commentary, Oct. 14) is accurate when he claims that “debates over gun control, auto safety, health care policy and pharmaceutical development are no longer being decided by the democratic process.” If they were, guns would be much more stringently controlled, auto manufacturers would be building safer cars, all Americans would be receiving what every other civilized nation provides for their citizens--free health care and pharmaceutical companies would be providing safer drugs at more reasonable prices, because that is what the overwhelming majority of the American people want.

However, he is wrong when he blames that on lawyers. The real blame belongs to the media that give little time to those issues while filling the airwaves and the newspapers with mostly gossip and trivia, and a government that is more interested in granting the wishes of multinational corporations than the needs of the citizens. As a matter of fact, it is the lawyers who are making those issues public when they file those large lawsuits that the media cannot ignore.

The case usually made against the lawyers is that they are simply enriching themselves, and that may be true. But if their lawsuits get guns off the streets, bring us safer cars, destroy the for-profit HMO business and bring us safer and cheaper drugs, I think that they are providing a valuable service and I don’t care how much money they earn doing it.

SANFORD THIER

Los Angeles

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Pinkerton states, “Yet any new gun policy could soon be all but mooted because, if present tort trends continue, there won’t be any new handguns manufactured in the United States.” If this is an example of the current effect “tort trends” are having on our society, please, keep ‘em coming.

PETER H. CROSSIN

Los Angeles