Now Glenn Garvin Wants to Be Dave Barry!

The Opinionator tries his hand at light, witty comedy, with disastrous results: 

The hundreds of complaints I got from lawyers after I wrote about frivolous lawsuits in pursuit of jackpot justice were so scatological that I’m now pretty certain law schools must offer elective courses in biology, because I have never heard so many richly descriptive references to such obscure corners of the digestive tract, nor such detailed instructions for how to insert my head into them.

Oh touche, Mr. Garvin, when do you pick up your next Pulitzer?

And the following passage is so mind-numbingly stupid I actually lost 42 neural receptors while simply cutting and pasting it: 

And even as the lawyers were proclaiming that in the majesty of the law, there is no such thing as a frivolous lawsuit, news broke out of a Chicago suburb of two children in their 20s suing their mother for serving them bad birthday cake and setting curfews for them in high school. The kids’ attorney is their divorced dad.

Ok, let's start with the first part --  no lawyer proclaims that "in the majesty of the law, there is no such thing as a frivolous lawsuit."

What the evidence shows -- particularly with the Hot Coffee documentary -- is that there is a large, well-funded corporate effort designed to "game" the system so false narratives are created and folks like Garvin lap it up and spit it right out.  Most judges and experienced lawyers, on the other hand, know that the current system works reasonably well and "frivolous" lawsuits rarely succeed and most often fail through proven procedural and substantive legal methods, such as motions to dismiss, summary judgment, contingency fee incentives, Rule 11, 57.105 and on and on and on.  That's what we do all day.

BTW, that doesn't mean that there is no such thing as a frivolous lawsuit, or that certain tweaks here and there might not be a bad idea -- but the criticism is often ideology-driven, overblown, ill-informed, and let's face it --  in Garvin's case he's just blowing smoke.

The second part is even more absurd -- "news broke out of a Chicago suburb of two children in their 20s suing their mother for serving them bad birthday cake and setting curfews for them in high school. The kids’ attorney is their divorced dad."

Glenn, this is not called a frivolous lawsuit -- it's called a "custody battle."

Does the Herald still have editors?