SEPTEMBER 12, 2021 – Recently, our friend R_______ found herself in a catch-22 pinch. After undergoing a medical procedure under light sedation, she was told that she could leave the clinic only with a responsible adult but that she’d have to exit within two hours after the procedure. R__________’s designated “responsible adult”—one of her daughters—wasn’t able to arrive within the prescribed two-hour limit. A Lyft or Uber driver didn’t count as a “responsible adult,” so R________ called my wife, who, I can attest, is both an adult and responsible.
The trouble was, however, that my wife had herself undergone a medical procedure that very morning and had been instructed not to drive for the remainder of the day. While I was at the grocery store, I received the call—would I be willing to rescue R_________?
Of course I was—so off I went.
When I arrived at the designated exit from the clinic, a staff member was dutifully pushing R__________ in a wheelchair out the door. In strict compliance with protocol, said staff member assisted R_________ up and out of the wheelchair and down and into my vehicle. After a “Good-bye!” that sounded like “Good riddance,” R__________ announced to me that she was fine. “Just take me to the parking ramp straight ahead,” she said.
As I soon learned, R___________ had driven the short distance from her apartment to the clinic. After work, R_______’s daughter had planned to drive to the clinic, get R_________ out of clinic jail, and do the same thing that I was being asked to do—drive R________ 100 feet to her car in the parking ramp so she could drive herself home.
When I offered to drive R_______ home, she protested. “No! I’m fine. Really, I’m perfectly fine. When I asked the clinic staff why I had to be accompanied by a responsible adult, they told me that if I should faint in the waiting room and hit my head going down, they could be sued.”
I was amused by the described exchange: in effect, a potential defendant inviting a potential—and unwitting–plaintiff to sue.
Both R_______ and I thought this was all rather preposterous, especially when contrasted with the infinitely greater risk associated with tens of millions of Americans refusing to get vaccinated against Covid-19; or, we agreed, in contrast with the health risk assumed by “that guy smoking,” as we saw a driver of a car at a tight corner inside the ramp, cigarette dangling from his lips.
I recognize the role that tort law plays in compensating a person—or a whole class of people—for the civil wrongs committed by another person or enterprise. Lord knows there’s plenty of negligence and willful wrongdoing that falls outside the ambit of criminal law. Accordingly, plaintiffs lawyers—gunslingers among the American pantheon of entrepreneurs—have their place.
But that corner of the bar has also created absurd, costly, and disruptive distortions of the sort confronted by our friend R____________. What common or individual good is served by such defensive arrangements against extortionists posing as lawyers?
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
