Win a few plaintiffs’ cases and the reward is supposed to be better cases. Plaintiffs lawyers work their way up from slip-and-falls to rollovers, then maybe onto roof collapses and oil well blowouts. Ultimately, a wrongful-death beneficiary walks into the office with a willful OSHA violation in hand and the plaintiffs lawyer says, “Ma’am, I think I can help you with this.”
From the defense side, the incentives all run in reverse. Pour the plaintiff out on a red light/green light case? That’s good, but how about if the driver was coming from a bar at the time? Coming from one bar and heading to another? Still standing? OK, let’s make the driver a 300-pound mouth-breather with cocaine metabolites in his blood. He’s taking the Fifth and he doesn’t look good. Mostly, he just looks sweaty.
