LAWYER SURFEIT DRIVES UP LIVING COSTS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 15, 1992                   TAG: 9202170207
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
LAWYER SURFEIT DRIVES UP LIVING COSTS
OK, SUE me! I happen to agree with Vice President Dan Quayle and state Sen. Madison Marye regarding the overabundance of lawyers.
Law schools grind out 14,000 new lawyers each year. We already have 10 (or is it 20?) times more lawyers per capita than any other country. Much of our high cost of living can be attributed to the law profession.
I'll swear under oath that a large portion of our high medical costs is caused by outlandish insurance premiums levied on doctors and hospitals to protect them from scurrilous suits filed by lawyer-influenced patient/clients and from equally outlandish decisions and awards by simple-minded juries.
And I'll swear on a stack of Bibles that much of our high auto-insurance premiums are a direct result of efforts by the bar association and lawyer-members of the General Assembly to kill, at all costs, any possibility of a fair no-fault auto-insurance system.
And I affirm that our small-aircraft industry, to name but one, has been practically wiped out by high insurance rates brought on by too many asinine suits where more simple-minded juries have been mesmerized into totally inappropriate verdicts and completely unjustified awards.
How juries can side with, for example, sunshine pilots who prang their plane and/or someone else's because of poor airmanship, limited/questionable qualifications or just plain ignorance and sue the manufacturer, defies reason, logic or common sense.
Finally, I'll swear that as the Congress and the General Assembly are composed of 80 to 90 percent lawyers, they bear the major blame for the sorry state of affairs we are in today. And as they (and most politicians) will do almost anything to get re-elected, nothing is going to change unless we wake up, get smart and vote responsibly.
Perhaps we should just nationalize the legal profession as some would do to the medical profession. With the legal beagles regulated by the bureaucrats, just imagine how our living conditions would improve.
And now, if the whitewash is ready, over to you, counselor . . . RICHARD K. CULBERTSON BLACKSBURG

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB