Lately, the old adage that “you really can’t understand a person’s life unless you stand in their shoes” is unfortunately all too often experienced when it concerns an individual who has suffered a personal injury inflicted by a careless individual or corporation. Furthermore, it seems that there is an ever growing indifference or even resentment among the public to an innocent accident victim choosing to seek justice and invoke their civil rights to receive compensation for their bodily injuries and monetary damages. How have we become so callous to the pain and suffering of others? Are we really a society of disconcern or even hypocritical beliefs?
Most of Florida’s population is part of the Judeo-Christian culture that breed compassion for each other since before the time of Christ. Our society was founded on the principles of co-existing with civil obedience, laws, duties, and the obligation to be responsible for our wrongs. Many of us attend our houses of worship and religiously affirm and re-affirm our commitments to basic values that revolve around caring and essentially doing the right thing.
Yet, as a Weston, Fort Lauderdale, Broward County personal injury justice trial attorney I am often confronted by a puzzling sense that it is somehow wrong to seek justice when someone is injured in a personal injury accident. Quite often, clients who I perceive as being well-intentioned start off by introducing themselves as being “not the type of person that sues.” Well to often individuals who are called to jury duty carry a background conversation which immediately goes to doubt the credibility or the authenticity of the lawsuit they need to judge before hearing any of the facts or evidence.
Are we truly identifying the real issues that motivate one to suddenly abandon our compassion for an injured individual? I submit to you that we are not as a society addressing what truly governs our belief system once we exit our houses of worship. I submit to you that corporate America has a stronghold on just about every aspect of our decision making processes and how we formulate opinions.
To be continued.
