The Litigation Explosion: What Happened When America Unleashed the Lawsuit [Paperback]

Walter K. Olson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1992

Twenty years ago, Americans saw lawsuits as a last resort; now they're the world's most litigous people. One of the most discussed, debated, and widely reviewed books of 1991, The Litigation Explosion explains why today's laws encourage us to sue first and ask questions later.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Walter K. Olson is fast becoming the legal world's foremost whistleblower. A columnist for Reason magazine and author of The Excuse Factory, Olson makes complex legal issues understandable to people without law degrees. In The Litigation Explosion, he tells of how the United States turned into the world's most litigious society. The account is entertaining because Olson is a good writer, but also infuriating because the problems he describes are severe--ambulance-chasers, junk litigation, and plaintiff awards that line the pockets of lawyers instead of the victims they allegedly represent. A good book for everybody, but a must-read for those in the legal profession.

From Publishers Weekly

This important book catalogues the sins of the legal profession, while detailing the dangers brought by the explosion in jurisprudence that has made America the most litigious society on earth.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 388 pages
• Publisher: Truman Talley Books (July 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452268249
• ISBN-13: 978-0452268241
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #813,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A hell of a book everyone should read!, December 6, 1999

By 

Helen E. Faria (Macon, Ga) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Litigation Explosion: What Happened When America Unleashed the Lawsuit (Paperback)

This book will remain timeless given the new legal assault onthe tobacco industry and the gun manufacturers. To find out the details and the evolution of legal concepts as it affects society, the reader should immerse himself in this momentous and extremely witty and well-written book by former Manhattan Institute scholar, Walter K. Olson. Olson's book traces the history of legal theory and ethics, and discusses the impact of these evolutionary (and revolutionary) changes on modern American society. Olson wittily, yet scholarly, details the detrimental effects of the litigation explosion on society. The book should be prescribed reading for anyone who recognizes that he/she too may well be caught in the net of litigation - that is, everyone of us. Olson makes it amply clear that no one is immune from this societal disease and that a strong remedy is needed to cure this affliction.

As I predicted in an editorial in the April 1993 issue of the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia, "On the Liability Crisis and the Glut of Litigators," the rate of litigation and the adversarial legal system has intensified with the presidency of Bill Clinton, who we know has the trial lawyers as his greatest campaign finance supporters. The litigation industry's proclivity to generate business for itself has been given a boost with his presidency, or rather co-presidency with attorney Hillary Clinton, and medical litigation has been no exception. Today, the attorney-litigators in collusion with an authoritarian public health establishment have targeted tobacco products and gun manufacturers, and have set their sights on HMOs and in the not-to-distant future, the fast food industry and nutritional products, particularly those that are considered more caloric than others and unhealthy by the coming new health police. These legal precedents are negating citizens their personal responsibility and their autonomy by blaming all their ills and afflictions on the acts of others, changing societal values in the process, and costing society billions of dollars.

This book does not deprecate honest attorneys who perform legal work necessary to adjudicate justice (e.g. criminal law), or who do the legal work necessary for the everyday business affairs of society: execute the required transactions in business deals, negotiate contracts, draw wills, carry out corporate work, serve in advisory or managerial capacity as general counsels and perform other non-trial work. What Mr. Olson denounces are those "wheel-of-fortune" and "lottery litigators" who aggressively participate in "the sue-for-profit litigation industry" for their own vested financial interest. As the author persuasively demonstrates these swashbuckling litigators are causing untold harm to the country and are unraveling the fabric of our nation.

What does Mr. Olson propose to thwart the litigation juggernaut? First, structured contingency fees should be implemented with a sliding fee-cap whereby fees diminish as awards increase; or even better, contingency fees should be eliminated. Most authorities agree that the unrestricted contingency fee is one of the greatest sources of grist for the sue-for-profit litigation mill.

For those who would drum up litigation, the "lawyers' contingency fee is like the battery in the Energizer bunny." It did not become legal in most of the United States until the 1960s. The practice is considered unethical and remains illegal in most other industrialized Western countries, because it is widely recognized that it encourages lawsuits and leads the plaintiff's attorney to overplay their client's hand in court.

Second, and most significantly, the author correctly asserts that we should strive nationally for adoption of the English Rule, which he calls "full two-way fee-shifting." By this rule, the losing side in litigation pays the court costs and all attorney's fees. This principle is not new. It is rooted firmly in Roman as well as Anglo-Saxon law. It has been and remains the rule in Great Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, and other countries whose legal systems derive from the Anglo-Saxon common law and the Roman civil law models.

This full two-way fee-shifting is, according to Olson, "the single most important and constructive legal reform that ordinary citizens can fight for over the long term. It is memorably simple and fair, and not easily subverted once put into effect. It may also be the only reform that could render tolerable today's procedural system of push-button litigation on demand, if that system is the one we want to keep....It's the heavily contingent, unlikely-to-succeed wildcat litigators who would be discouraged by fee-shifting. And they are precisely the ones who should have been driven from the courthouse....By the horror with which they react to full fee-shifting, we will get a good idea of their sincerity."

This book should be read by all Americans concerned with the litigation explosion, not only to protect our pocketbooks, but also to preserve our personal responsibilities which come with what remains of our individual liberties.

Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Sentinel of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) and author of Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine...

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading For Every American, December 18, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Litigation Explosion: What Happened When America Unleashed the Lawsuit (Paperback)

Walter Olson has produced the best book on the subject of lawsuits and related problems in America today. His research is scholarly and the presentation is lively. Your blood may boil but unless you're a lawyer, you'll have a hard time arguing your way out of the illuminated nonsense in our legal system that Olson exposes. If you like cheap novels this book isn't for you; but if you want to understand one of the major problems with the crazy U.S. legal system, you can't afford to miss this one. Great reading and worth the time. I consider it #1 on the list in this subject matter area. Olson has done Americans a favor; will they do something about it?

1 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Propagandistic and Provocative Anecdotism, February 13, 2004

By 

wildbill (Tacoma, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Litigation Explosion: 2 (Hardcover)

For a collection of anecdotes strung together by a layperson in the employ of a conservative think tank, "The Litigation Explosion" is pretty good. Walter Olson's tales are usually interesting, especially when he deviates from the facts of cases. His animosity toward lawyers makes for diatribes that are far more amusing than informative, so Olson's storytelling adds up to theses that seem more compelling the less that one actually knows about law. As is usual for popularizations, "The Litigation Explosion" will move the unwary to outrage and to tears. It will not educate the unwary, of course. It will instead adjust their attitudes so that they will embrace tort reform by book's end. Olson is a master propagandist, which is usually what the Manhattan Institute wants and pays for.

Walter Olson has produced an accessible book regarding lawsuits. His writing is lively. You'll laugh; you'll cry; your blood will boil if you mistake his caricatures for reality. If you believe that lawyer jokes are not merely funny but scholarship, this book is for you.