Attorney Mark Sparks – Why do some clients feel guilty about suing

Ferguson Law Firm Attorney Mark Sparks explains the importance of a trial attorney.

Through manipulation by the powers that be — through the use of the McDonald's hot coffee case, right? "Spill some hot coffee, you get a couple million dollars." — people have been wrongfully led to the conclusion that filing a lawsuit is a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. Filing a lawsuit is an exercise of your constitutional right to stand up for yourself, or stand up for your family member, or stand up for what's right. A lot of the change in this country has come from filing lawsuits. Both my granddads worked in the refineries — I was born and raised in Beaumont — and forty or fifty years ago there was not a lot of safety floating around in the local refineries. Today — and I'm not saying it's solely because of lawsuits — things are better and things are safer.

Filing a lawsuit, particularly when you're up against a well-funded insurance company or a bank or whatever the company is, is a way, again, to bring balance where there was an imbalance. The Founding Fathers knew that, and that's why they created the right to a jury trial. The decision isn't made by an elected official. In other countries, there is no right to a civil jury trial — this country is unique; it's the only country on the planet that generally allows civil jury trials, with juries making the decision.

And why is that? Because the Founding Fathers determined that rather than having the decision made by an elected official, or someone subject to being swayed through a transactional relationship or political donations, you pick twelve random people off the voting rolls or the driver's license rolls, put them in a box, let them hear the story, and let them make the decision. That was a creation of the Founding Fathers — a continuation of earlier juries — instilled into our Constitution to protect people's civil rights, and their rights when they're injured.