Walter Olson, as other reviewers have noted, is biased. He is a pro-business conservative who works for pro-business causes. This book, as other reviewers have noted, does not address the corrupt nature of corporations or their lack of accountability to the consumer.
On the other hand, those points have nothing to do with his thesis: that a small elite of plantiff trial lawyers, using government influence and sloppy law, have turned the civil justice system of the United States into a gigantic blackmail machine for their own enrichment. Olson supports this thesis with chapter after devastating chapter showing how nepotism, abuse of class action, junk science, the triumph of emotion over fact, and above all the ability to sue without any grounds whatever without any consequences have destroyed justice in the civil system.
Olsen offers several solutions to these abuses. He proposes instituting European standards for civil suits- that is, the loser pays all the winner's legal costs. He proposes a ban on percentage-of-settlement contingency fees. He proposes massive class action tort reform- under the current system class action lawyers win massive payoffs while their clients, who generally don't even KNOW they're clients, at most get a coupon for a product they no longer want. Most of all, he calls on his readers to be aware of the issues of tort reform in the political arena- an awareness made all the more necessary by the prevalence of trial lawyers in legislative office and the massive campaign donations trial lawyers give to establishment officials.
Don't take everything in this book as gospel, and certainly question Olson's bias. Even after doing so, the simple facts in the book demonstrate beyond doubt that corrupt lawyers not only use the system to their own advantage, but in so doing endanger the freedom of all Americans- particularly the freedom from judicial extortion.
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