Who doesn’t remember this traumatic experience from childhood? You’re sitting in your desk at school, trying not to be noticed, trying to look like you’re paying attention as you daydream or doodle in the margins of your notebook or pass messages to the cute kid in the next aisle, when suddenly it comes to the teacher’s attention that one of your classmates has done something horribly wrong and deserves to be punished.
“Who did this?” the teacher demands, as if expecting a full and immediate confession from the culprit, which most of the kids in the class know is not likely to be forthcoming, and isn’t.
So, what does the teacher do? You know exactly what she does. She threatens to punish the whole class for the misbehavior of one – a response recognized by all the innocents as a gross injustice.
Some of the kids actually know who did the bad thing, but won’t speak up, either because they like or fear the perp or because they dread being branded, for life, as a tattletale.
Maybe the guilty party experiences pangs of conscience and comes clean to spare his classmates unjust punishment. More likely, he learns the wrong lesson and grows up to be a successful politician.
Needless to say, the teacher who cast aspersions indiscriminately and blamed multitudes for the misdeeds of a few later gets a law degree and becomes an asbestos attorney.
When all of the companies she might plausibly have accused of being responsible for asbestos-related injuries allegedly suffered by her clients have been sued out of existence, she casts the net wider.
“Asbestos litigation continues to create problems for businesses, and West Virginia is the epicenter,” a recent report asserts. “Over-naming of defendants in asbestos litigation, who have little or no known liability for asbestos-related products, is a serious issue and it is trending upward for companies.”
Pshaw! says Putnam County asbestos attorney Brian Prim, in response to proposed legislation to curb over-naming.
Still, it seems like a gross injustice to us.