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  3. Americans are still chuckling about the "pants suit". A man—a judge, no less

Americans are still chuckling about the "pants suit". A man—a judge, no less

游客2024-11-18  0
问题     Americans are still chuckling about the "pants suit". A man—a judge, no less—sued his dry cleaners for $54m for allegedly losing his trousers. A sign at the shop promised "Satisfaction Guaranteed". The plaintiff was not satisfied, so he cried fraud. He then used his highly trained legal brain to calculate the damages he was owed. He started with $1,500, a reasonable fine for consumer fraud. He multiplied it by 12, for the number of his complaints. Then by 1,200, for the number of days he was deprived of his trousers. And then by three, for the three owners of the dry-cleaning shop. After adding a bit more for mental anguish, the total came to $67m, but he kindly reduced it to $54m.
    When the case was dismissed in 2007, many felt justice had prevailed. But the defendants had been put through purgatory and saddled with $100,000 in legal costs. They closed the shop and considered moving back to South Korea. The case illustrates " an important truth about human nature—that angry people can go nuts," observes Philip Howard, a campaigner for legal reform. What was most shocking about the pants suit was not the idiotic claim, he says, "but that the case was allowed to go on for more than two years." Some judges think even the nuttiest plaintiffs deserve their day in court. As the judge who let a woman sue McDonald’s for serving her the coffee with which she scalded herself put it: "Who am I to judge?"
    The rule of law is a wonderful thing, as anyone who has visited countries ruled by the whims of the powerful can attest. But you can have too much of a wonderful thing. And America has far too much law, argues Mr. Howard in a new book, Life without Lawyers. For nearly every problem, lawmakers and bureaucrats imagine that more detailed rules are the answer. But people need to exercise their common sense, too. Alas, the proliferation of rules is making that harder.
    At a school in Florida, for example, a five-year-old girl decided to throw everyone’s books and pencils on the floor. Sent to the head teacher’s office, she continued to wreak havoc. Her teachers dared not restrain her physically. Instead, they summoned the police, who led her away in handcuffs, howling. The teachers acted as they did for fear of being sued. A teacher at a different school was sued for $20m for putting a hand on a rowdy child’s back to guide him out of the classroom. The school ended up settling for $90,000. Understandably, many schools ban teachers from touching pupils under any circumstances. In New York City, where more than 60 bureaucratic steps are required to suspend a pupil for more than five days, teachers are so frightened of violating pupils’ rights that they cannot keep order.
    The relentless piling of law upon law—the federal register has 70,000 ever-changing pages-does not make for a more just society. When even the most trivial daily interactions are subject to detailed rules, individual judgment is stifled. When rule-makers seek to eliminate small risks, perverse consequences proliferate. Bureaucrats rip up climbing frames for fear that children may fall off and break a leg. So children stay indoors and get fat.
    The direct costs of lawsuits are only one of the drawbacks of an over-legalistic society. Too many rules squeeze the joy out of life. Doctors who inflict dozens of unnecessary tests on patients to fend off lawsuits take less pride in their work. And although the legal system is supposed to be neutral, the scales are tilted in favour of whoever is in the wrong. Because the process is so expensive and juries are so unpredictable, blameless people often settle baseless claims to make them go away. The law is supposed to protect individuals from the state, but it often allows selfish individuals to harness the state’s power to settle private scores.
    Will any of this change under Barack Obama? At first glance, the odds are poor. The new President is a lawyer from a party dominated by lawyers. His vice-president publicly thanked God last year that lawyers are such a problem for corporate America. When Mr. Obama was in the Senate, he once voted for a mild curb on jurisdiction-shopping by class-action lawyers, but otherwise tended to vote against tort reform. And Democrats in the new Congress are itching to reward the lawyers who donated so generously to their election campaigns, for example by revoking the (admittedly short) statute of limitations on pay-discrimination claims, allowing lawyers to mine decades-old grievances.  [br] According to the author, the proliferation of law upon law might lead to the following EXCEPT _______.
选项 A、the obesity among school children
B、the abuse of law for personal gains
C、the prevalence of more justice in society
D、the decline of enjoyment in life
答案 C
解析 推断题。从第五段第一句的“法律条文的不断增加……并不能营造一个更加公平的社会”可知，[C]不是法律不断增加可以导致的，故为正确答案。第五段后半部分说“当立法者致力于减少很少的危险(而不断立法)时，(与期望)相左的结果不断增加。官员因担心孩子掉下、摔断腿，而把攀爬的把手拆毁。所以，孩子只得待在屋里，变胖了”，因此排除[A]；由第六段最后一句的“法律应该是用来保护个人免受国家侵害，但是它却让一些自私的个人利用国家权力解决私人恩怨”，可排除[B]；根据第六段第二句“过多的法律挤走了生活中的很多乐趣”可以排除[D]。
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