For many years I’ve mediated thousands of widely varied civil lawsuits. No matter how diverse the subject matter, wrongful death, real estate, employment or contract, many cases have been fueled by an ambition that is often hard to distinguish from wishful thinking. Although ambition is usually displayed by the amount of damages sought by plaintiffs and their attorneys, it also regularly appears in the attitude of defendants and their lawyers and insurance claims personnel for different reasons.
Plaintiffs ambitiously chase “justice” having never experienced the difficulty of winning a civil lawsuit. The most ambitious litigants in this regard are usually the least sophisticated or may have been misled by attorneys who have overstated the value of a case merely to hold onto it. Alternatively, some plaintiffs ambitiously view litigation as a sword for administering retribution upon a defendant. This Old Testament stance usually fails because judges and juries may not regard the defendant in the same negative light as does the plaintiff or they may believe that the plaintiff is also flawed. Many plaintiffs forget that in our civil justice system they have the burden of proof and that in jury trials they
AMBITION AND WISHFUL THINKING:
CONJOINED TWINS IN CIVIL LITIGATION
By Gregg Bertram
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