David S. Casey Jr.
CASEY, of Casey, Gerry, Reed and Schenk of San Diego, is president of Consumer Attorneys of California. His term in office expires Nov. 30.

When I went into the practice of law nearly 25 years ago, I was very proud of the profession and of my father, who had been a respected San Diego attorney for many years. Being a plaintiff's lawyer was almost a calling, one in which your real partner was an injured consumer. Together, you sought justice.

Now, turn the calendar pages ahead. It is last Oct. 1, and many newspapers are reporting a statewide poll by the respected Mervin Field organization.

The poll asked 1,007 adults how much confidence they had in various professions and institutions. Ranked at the very bottom were insurance companies. Ranked second to the bottom was the legal profession.

What has happened?

For one thing, I think we brought some of this on ourselves. Call it the biblical sins of greed and arrogance. However, I think much of that is a residue of the 1980s, a decade of self-indulgence that permeated perhaps all occupations, not only the lawyers.

Here's another thing: While acknowledging the importance of First Amendment rights and guarantees, I believe some of the attorney advertising on California television and radio is pretty rank stuff and frankly misleading. It is no surprise that such advertising sours people on lawyers, as well as on the civil justice system.

I think another reason our reputation -- and, correspondingly, that of the insurance industry -- is at rock bottom in California, at least, is because in recent years these two deep-pockets special interests have spent millions and millions of dollars publicly chewing each other up through initiative and counter-initiative campaigns. With those kind of political nuclear wars, it stands to reason that both sides end up suffering bad reputations among Californians.

What about our foes in the insurance industry and big business? It is too easy to slide into occupational paranoia and conclude that our crummy reputation comes from a sustained massive anti-plaintiff-lawyer campaign funded by the big guys in corporate row.

But there is some truth to that. The reason is that insurance carriers and big business don't like consumers and their lawyers winning cases against them. Go figure.

There is indeed an anti-plaintiff-lawyer campaign. It's big and well-funded. The thrust of the campaign is multifaceted fiction: The first fallacy is that there is a litigation explosion. The second is that the courts are clogged with "frivolous" lawsuits. And the third is that juries are running wild with unfair punitive damages.

How does one fight that? The only effective means, albeit time-consuming, is to patiently present the facts:

The state Judicial Council noted last June in its annual report that there is hardly a litigation explosion. The report showed that total personal-injury filings are continuing their nine-year decline, dropping 14 percent since the filing peak of 1986-87. Motor-vehicle filings crept up less than 1 percent from 1994-'95 to 1995-'96, but were still down 48 percent from the filing peak in 1988-'89.

According to a 1991 Rand Institute study, most Americans who are injured do not turn to the courts for compensation. "In this respect, American behavior does not accord with the more extreme pictures of litigiousness that have been put forward by some."

A 1995 Duke University Law School study declared that data "does not support the widely made claims that jury damage awards are based on the depth of defendants' pockets, sympathies for plaintiffs, caprice or excessive generosity. It also yields no support for the assertions about the proclivities of juries in handing out punitive damages."

What plaintiffs' attorneys and their consumer allies need to do is worry less about their reputations and work instead to bring some common sense to the legislative and civil justice systems. We also should ratchet down the rhetoric a bit.

Specifically, we must continue our meetings with insurance carriers to seek a low-cost auto insurance policy available to all Californians. Despite Gov. Pete Wilson's recent veto of such compromise legislation, the task force of some insurance carriers, the consumer attorneys, consumer groups and builders and developers need to again meet to develop another consensus legislation to reduce litigation over construction defects.

And surely it is time to amend the 22-year-old state law that says patients found injured by medical malpractice are limited to no more than $250,000 for demonstrated pain and suffering.

It's not a lengthy list, just one that helps consumers.

Copyright Union-Tribune Publishing Co.