``Contingent fees in negligence cases are important to consumers, because they enable consumers who can't afford to pay a lawyer in advance, to have access to the courts when they are injured.'' Harry M. Snyder, Consumers Union, Publisher of Consumer Reports.
Propositions 201 and 202 are two parts of the same rotten deal. One makes you pay for their lawyer. And the other limits your lawyer without limiting theirs.
Why didn't the corporations who paid millions for Proposition 202 include their own lawyers?
Because they don't want to limit the ``justice'' they can ``buy'' with their corporate lawyers.
Why didn't these corporations limit their own lawsuits?
Because ``businesses file ten times as many lawsuits as injured consumers,'' according to a 1995 study by Citizen Action, one of the nation's leading consumer organizations.
These same corporations say that Proposition 201 won't ``affect lawsuits over dangerous products.''
But they wrote Proposition 202 to rig the system against lawsuits over any dangerous product.
Their argument for Proposition 202 is that lawyers ``pocketed'' too much money.
Easy for them to say . . .
In Proposition 201 they took care of their legal costs by making consumers put up what could be millions in deposits to pay their corporate lawyers before anyone can sue them.
Under Propositions 201 and 202, the only winners are the corporations that paid to put them on the ballot . . . you and every other consumer lose.
MICHAEL SHAMES
Executive Director, Utility Consumer Action
Network (UCAN)
LOIS WELLINGTON
President, Congress of California Seniors