I was trying to find a parking spot in our overcrowded garage yesterday when I got an abject lesson in what certain folks think us lawyers do. I was behind an elderly lady who was going far too slow for my tastes. Nevertheless, rounding a corner in the garage, this woman broke suddenly to allow a roughly 30-year-old woman, who was walking, to get out of the middle of the driving lane. After getting out of the way, the younger woman yelled back to the elderly woman in front of me: "YOU WANT A LAWSUIT? YOU WANT A LAWSUIT?"

Honestly, I had to smile at how little this younger woman seemed to know about her rights and the other lady’s potential liabilities. Who knows what a jury would have said about the liability issues, or sorted out the issue of comparative fault, but the young woman certainly seemed to think that she had the case as good as won.

This strange little vignette of Americana got me thinking. We do a lot of public speaking to health agencies about their potential liability for negligent inspections; we also represent lots of people who are foodpoisoning victims; but how much does the average person actually know about liability, much less liability in food cases? So at the risk of boring people stiff, I thought i’d take some time to explain the law we face in our "tort" cases.Continue Reading Law School 101: the wireless paper chase