As people who drive through northwest Indiana know, there are a lot of billboard along the expressways – and most of them seem to fit in one of three categories: fireworks, gentlemen’s clubs (do real gentlemen go to “gentlemen’s” clubs?), and personal injury lawyers. I won’t ask you to rank the social usefulness of these billboards or the businesses that advertise on them. Rather, I wanted to talk about one of the lawyers’ billboards.
Most of the lawyers’ billboards mention specific types of matters. (I don’t want to call them “specialties” because I don’t know what the Indiana Bar rules are on specialization and advertising.) There are ones for car accidents, personal injuries, and, of course, mesothelioma. But one billboard particularly struck me. In big letters it says, “Cancer Lawsuits”. It then lists seven or eight different types of cancer, including esophageal, lung, liver, pancreatic, throat, and, of course, mesothelioma (though it was pretty far down the list).
Which gets me to my point: I understand (sort of) billboards talking about car accidents or personal injuries. But to just say “Cancer Lawsuits” and then to list all kinds of different cancers is to imply (actually, to say) that, if you have cancer, almost no matter what kind of cancer, you can sue somebody. Get cancer; get money. That is pretty much the point of the billboard. I wonder about it.
Does it really help to have people think that if they develop cancer, there must be somebody they can sue? I understand that certain cancers are caused by things other people have done. Mesothelioma is an example. But all of these? It’s as if nothing is your fault or, as is sometimes true in the case of cancer, just bad luck. Anything bad is somebody else’s fault – and you can sue them for it.
Obviously, there are situations where you are injured by somebody else’s negligence, and you should be able to collect damages in that case. But to have the default position be that nothing is just bad luck or your responsibility, and that you can sue somebody for it. I don’t think that’s a good thing – or has the best results for society.
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