by Joseph Perkins

"Our agenda for jobs and growth must help small business owners and employees…and protect them from junk and frivolous lawsuits." -President George W. Bush

The nation's trial lawyers didn't care much for President Bush's State of the Union speech this week.

It was one thing for the president to speak unkindly about dictators with weapons of mass destruction, athletes using steroids and gay couples seeking marriage.

But how dare he insinuate that trial lawyers are swamping the nation's courts with lawsuits, shaking down small businesses and large corporations alike, raking in millions of dollars in fees while their clients receive comparatively little or nothing.

David Casey, president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, complains that Bush "blamed America's economic problems on the lawyers who represent consumers and workers."

He suggests that the Republican in the White House seeks nothing less than to "take away the legal rights of American families."

But it's not just President Bush who thinks that there too many lawsuits, too many avaricious trial lawyers.

More than three-quarters of Americans expressed similar sentiments in a survey released last year by the American Tort Reform Association. And early half supported tort reform as a means to curb the more frivolous lawsuits.

How far would Americans go to rein in the trial lawyers? A Gallup Poll last year on medical malpractice litigation offered a clue.

Nearly three-quarters favored a limit on the amount patients can be awarded for their pain and suffering. Nearly two-thirds favored a limit on the amount that patients can be awarded as punishment to doctors for negligence or carelessness.

The nation's trial lawyers may find those poll results disconcerting. (In fact, they actually question the validity of the ATRA survey).

But the American people recognize that there are too many trial lawyers in the legal game not so much to "represent consumers and workers," nor to protect the "legal rights of American families," but to get themselves rich off of contingency fees.

To those money-grubbing barristers, the wheel of justice is a wheel of fortune. They file lawsuit after lawsuit, no matter how frivolous in far too many cases, and they spin the wheel hoping for a multimillion dollar payout.

When they finally hit the jackpot, when they find a jury willing to award their plaintiff some outrageous judgment, the trial lawyer becomes the toast of their profession.

Indeed, he or she and his or her law firm might even make Lawyers Weekly's exalted list of the year's "Top Ten Jury Verdicts" to individual plaintiffs, the legal game's equivalent to college football's BCS rankings.

For the most ambitious trial lawyers, individual plaintiffs are not where the action is anymore. To rake in the biggest bucks, they go class action.

So we have seen a dramatic rise in class actions suits involving plaintiffs from the dozens to the hundreds to the thousands to the millions over the last decade or so.

No company, no industry with deep pockets is safe from the class action lawyers. They bankrupted asbestos makers. They took down the tobacco industry. They ran makers of silicon breast implants out of business. They shook down condominium builders (with construction defect litigation).

And after the legal vultures pick the carcass of one industry clean, they move on to the next. Indeed, the latest targets are gun manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and fast-food restaurants.

The plague of litigation exacts a tremendous toll on the U.S. economy. In fact, a recent report by Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, a consulting firm that primarily serves the insurance industry, estimated tort litigation costs at $233 billion in 2002.

That means that lawyers are siphoning 2.23 percent of the nation's economic output, according to the Tillinghast report. That works out to $807 for each and every U.S. citizen.

Now if each and every American was tangibly benefiting from the flood of litigation inundating the nation's courts, maybe it would be worth the $807 per person (or at least maybe a couple hundred bucks a year).

But the biggest beneficiaries of personal injury claims, of malpractice suits, of class actions and other such litigation is not the consumer, not the worker, not the family.

It's the buckraking trial lawyer.

Perkins can be reached via e-mail.

See David S. Casey Jr.'s response to this article here.