I'm reeeeeeeeeeeeeeal curious, just what is it that would make you happy? How 'bout a list?
ETA:
Somethin' else I'm curious about, just how much do you and your peers think, say a broken bone, oughta be worth? As much as you can get right? Hell if you can get 25 mil, that's fair, ain't it?
As for a list of what would make me happy, I don't think that would be productive. If you'd like, you're welcome to see what one liberal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, proposed in 1944--his
Second Bill of Rights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_RightsOf course, any discussion of the
Second Bill of Rights should include a discussion of how to pay for all of that. And, as you know, I do favor progressive taxation, but I am not a tax expert (as many here seem to be), and I do not know what rates would be appropriate to cover what FDR proposed. I merely know that our current tax structure is patently unfair.
As for your broken bone question, as gruesome as it may be, I am forced to consider that question on a regular basis, as are the insurance adjusters with whom I negotiate. And if a given case is turned over to defense attorneys by the insurance campany, then they too must grapple with this question. In both cases, we ask ourselves, "What is the jury likely to award?" "Waht is this injury worth?" In fact, there's an entire website devoted to this very question. They compare jury awards from around the country and try to come up with some reasonable estimates of what a given injury is worth.
I can tell you that you'd be sorely disappointed by the value of the injuries that they list. No injury is worth one million dollars (much less twenty-five million). You don't get that kind of money unless someone dies, and, even then, the deceased person has to be young and has to make a lot of money every year to be worth 25 million. The big jury awards come not because of the injury (or the death) but because the tortfeasor (the defendant) does something that the jury thinks was unreasonably dangerous. In John Edawards' most famous case, he sued a pool manufacturer for creating a drain that had killed several children. He put up an expert that showed that the pool manufacturer knew about the problem, and that they could have fixed it by adding a 25 cent part. The jury was furious that the company didn't make this change once the company learned about the previous children that had been drowned due to their design defect, and the jury punished the company for it--with a big punitive damages award.
No broken bone, though, is worth 25 million, and as much as I hate to engage in this kind of gruesome speculation, I have to do it in order to be able to zealously advocate for my clients.
-Laelth
