Are We Knights In Shining Armor Or Are We Mercenaries?
In response to my article to our debate on Workinjury.com's Point Counter Point Mr. Mozzarella emailed the Webmaster and stated as follows:
"You know there is honor and gallantry among mercenaries. Oh pardon me. I misspoke I am informed the loyal opposition is of the opinion they are knights in shinning armor defending the rights of the downtrodden. "
This of course was in response to my article "A Call to Arms".
In my last article where I laid out the sketch of the plan I dreamed up, I noted that the real issue will be to get both injured and uninjured employees to realize that it is in their best interests to vote in favor of any initiative put forth that will restore many of the constitutional rights that SB899 has stripped from them.
When HR fought his initiative, he didn't have a clearly identifiable class of people that his initiative targeted. In our case, every voter who is an employee in some form or another would, if they based their vote upon informed reason, rationally come to the conclusion that they should want to have decent benefits if they are, or have been, injured while on the job.
As obvious as this is to us, it appears that the voting public does not use pure reason as a basis for their vote.
A clear-cut example of this occurred in the last election. The voters overwhelmingly approved proposition 64 and also rejected proposition 72.
Proposition 64 was billed as a proposition to "Stop Shakedown Lawsuits" and was supported by the incorruptible Governor of the people. It obtained 64% of the vote. A clear mandate. But a mandate to do what?
In reality, proposition 64 was promoted by the Chamber of Horrors and big business interests. Its focus was on limiting our rights as individuals to act in the place of the Attorney General to bring a quasi class action suits against any business that was running a scam or was harming the environment. The right to do so was codified in the Business and Professions Code. This code simplified the class action lawsuit, which is a very difficult suit to bring and sustain. In particular, the Federal Government has recently passed a law that now requires that class actions be brought in federal court.
Unfortunately, some opportunistic "bad apple" attorneys used the section to file these suits against small businesses that may have committed small infractions. The suits are extremely complex and the defense is rather expensive. In short, the small business owners would pony up a smaller settlement than what it would have cost to defend the suit. Hence, they were in effect shake down lawsuits.
The legislature was aware of this problem but failed to act by amending the statute to plug this loophole. Big business took advantage of this by selling its proposition to the public on false pretenses. This is the type of misrepresentation that the Unfair Business Practices Act was enacted to prevent. Instead, the voters took the bait and passed a law that essentially eliminates the public's right to stop big business from committing fraud on all of us. Big business found strong support from small business owners who were the victims of this misuse of the law by a small group of renegade attorneys. In short, the passage of proposition 64 is a green light for business to rip us off in any clever way they can think of without fear of accountability in the courts.
Proposition 72 was a proposition opposed by the Chamber and big business. It was a referendum to enforce SB2 that was already passed into law. This bill required big and medium sized businesses to provide medical coverage for their employees.
Once again the Governator sided with big business and opposed the initiative and once again the public voted to NOT have health insurance.
In defense of the Democrats, this is proof positive that they were right to agree to SB899 as a compromise as in all likelihood the more draconian initiative that the Governor would have sponsored would also have passed. Of course, at that time the new Governator hadn't shown his sociopath side. Now that the nurses, fire fighters, teachers, students, seniors and a host of other good people are against him, his ratings have justifiably plummeted. By election time in 2006, we will have a different voting public to present our initiative to.
Nevertheless, this apparent irrationality is what we are up against.
Though we have a constituency that should support our efforts, this is certainly no guarantee that they will support our initiative. We know, of course, that the opposition will bill our initiative as a desperate attempt by ambulance chasing attorneys to preserve their right to exploit the victims of injuries. Once again, we will become the scapegoat to deflect the truth of our position.
This is the crux of the problem identified in the question posed by Dan. Are we Knights in Shining Armour or as Mr. Mozzarella states, are we Mercenaries?
At the moment I would have to say that our public perception is closer to the mercenary than the Night. Is that perception reflective of objective reality or is it skewed by the tactics and propaganda promulgated by the forces of evil? What is the true nature of our relationship with the public?
I believe that our relationship with the public is one the can be characterized as a 'symbiotic' one.
In nature there are many symbiotic relationships between creatures of different species that is analogous to our relationship with our clients and society on the whole.
A symbiotic relationship is when two organisms of different species "work together," each benefiting from the relationship. One example of a symbiotic relationship is that of the oxpecker (a kind of bird) and the rhinoceros or zebra. Oxpeckers land on rhinos or zebras and eat ticks and other parasites that live on their skin. The oxpeckers get food and the beasts get pest control. Also, when there is danger, the oxpeckers fly upward and scream a warning, which helps the symbiont (a name for the other partner in a relationship).
A certain kind of bacteria lives in the intestines of humans and many other animals. The human cannot digest all of the food that it eats. The bacteria eat the food that the human cannot digest and partially digest it, allowing the human to finish the job. The bacteria benefit by getting food, and the human benefits by being able to digest the food it eats.
So too is the attorney client relationship symbiotic. Indeed, we do benefit and essentially feed off the injuries sustained by our clients. But we did not cause the injury and our services as well as our organizations benefit the injured victims in helping their survival and in promoting both directly and indirectly, safer working environments.
Our clients are not required to retain our services; it is by choice. In fact, we would not exist if the insurance carriers were providing all of the benefits due and quality medical care in the first place.
Most injured workers fear and loathe the idea of retaining an attorney. Most of my clients come to me because they have reached the end of their rope with the treatment they have received at the hands of the insurance industry. If the insurance industry really wants to get rid of us, all they have to do is to treat injured workers fairly. Had this been the case there would be no need for us and no need for "reform".
This, of course, will never happen because of the nature of the beast. As I illustrated the insurance industry is sociopathic and is incapable of this kind of conduct or humane thinking.
At this juncture, then, the apparent dilemma is if we are Knights and not Mercenaries then why doesn't the public perceive us in this way?
As mentioned above, we know that our opponents have painted us that way. That to a large extent answers the question but in believing that is the whole answer we delude ourselves. The truth is that we act like mercenaries and have done little or nothing to counter the conditioned response promulgated by the scociopaths.
Yes, we are there for the public; all they have to do is call. But in order to obtain our help they must pay a price. Thus our own interests are easily skewed by propaganda to engender the belief that all of our actions are only in our own interests and not in the interests of the people whom we represent nor in the interests of society as a whole.
To counter this perception, we must demonstrate to the public that while we do have self-interests we also have a vested interest in the well being of the employee class, especially those who are injured on the job.
For example, we should have established an injured workers emergency relief fund. A fund that can provide no interest loans or grants to injured workers in desperate need. How many times have you had a frantic injured worker who was cut off TD and was literally faced with eviction? We desperately have to call the sociopath and plead for a PD advance to prevent our client and his or her children from being kicked to the curb.
We could have a volunteer attorney at every board offering free advice to the bewildered pro per IW who shows up for an MSC without a clue as to what they should do. Such a program would necessarily require that the attorney could not take that case or to take it pro bono, so as not to look like a marketing scheme. We could run free workshops without trying to hustle cases. If we had ever bothered to put our mind to it, we would be seen as public service, and not a bunch of bloodsuckers. In other words, we have made it easy for the sociopaths to make us appear as parasites and not symbionts.
If we really cared about injured workers, these programs would be flourishing and we would not have ever had to contend with SB899 because a large contingent of the voting public would have backed us as they backed HR and Ralph Nader in the proposition wars. If we had that kind of power to sway that many voters, the Democrats would not have had to capitulate and sign SB899. If we had that much sway, Proposition 103 would have been applied to the WC insurance industry a long time ago and there would not even be a "crisis".
This would have been a lot easier to achieve prior to SB899 while we were ranking it in, but now that our incomes are threatened and CAAA is fledgling, it will take twice the effort and commitment.
If we ever do get a grass roots initiative movement going, this will have to be a major component of our strategy to win the initiative, because to win the initiative we will first have to win the hearts and minds of the injured workers and all of the employees of the state. If we fail to organize and put an initiative on the ballot for 2006 we still need a long range plan to win back the rights of the injured workers as well as our benefit in the symbiotic relationship. In either case we must change the public's perception to preceive us as Knights and not Mercenaries.
In conclusion, we are Knights in Tarnished rather than Shining Armour. Our failure to cultivate our relationship with our symbiont , the injured workers and all of the employees in the state, may result in the extinction of both of us.
As Voltaire stated "we must all tend to our own gardens."
Instead of weeding, fertilizing, seeding, raking and watering our garden, we have been too busy shopping for cheap goods made in China while our garden has been taken over by weeds.
If we have any hope of survival, we had better tend to our garden of symbionts before the weeds are all that is left.
- J. Geller
March 22, 2005
