{"id":109,"date":"2010-09-14T10:59:21","date_gmt":"2010-09-14T14:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=109"},"modified":"2014-12-12T18:45:04","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T23:45:04","slug":"why-sue-it%e2%80%99s-personal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=109","title":{"rendered":"Why Sue? It\u2019s Personal"},"content":{"rendered":"

No political system ever perfectly expresses the needs of its society. \u2013 Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe not, but lawsuits come close.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve noticed that I\u2019ve developed a calm and resilient philosophy about suing.\u00a0 Perhaps you\u2019ve wondered why.<\/p>\n

Let me introduce you to my late mother, Esther Fein.\u00a0 She was an earthy lady, a crypto-feminist with auburn hair that fell to her waist.\u00a0 She wore no makeup, no jewelry, not even a wedding ring.\u00a0 Had there been a Levi\u2019s store every three blocks in the 1950’s, she would\u2019ve been wearing jeans every day.<\/p>\n

She fed us yogurt the first year it was sold in the United States and, almost from our birth, deposited repulsive drops of omega-rich fish oil into our morning orange juice, where they floated upon the orange surface like teeny Gulf oil clots.\u00a0 And she initiated me into the sublime adventures of discount shopping by plucking a $3.99 swath of shop-worn organdy off a remnant table and turning it into a pretty graduation dress.<\/p>\n

Long ago Mom knew that lanolin was the best emollient, and taught us why we should never cross a union picket line.\u00a0 A teacher, she patiently showed me how to take notes in outline form and later, when I was a teenager, imposed no curfews whatsoever when I went out at night.<\/p>\n

A real free spirit, my mother.<\/p>\n

There was one conventional mother thing she worried about, though.\u00a0 Whenever we were in a store, theater or other building with a tangle of aisles or staircases and no obvious egress, my mom would narrow her eyes, murmur, \u201cThis place is a fire trap,\u201d and immediately visually locate the nearest fire exit.\u00a0 Just in case.<\/p>\n

I never thought to ask my mom the cause of her uncharacteristic nervousness but I now believe it\u2019s because she was born around the time of the 1911 Triangle Shirt Factory fire that killed over 100 young women factory workers who couldn\u2019t escape the building because most of the exits had been locked by the owners.<\/p>\n

Adding to my mother\u2019s particular ontological anxiety, I myself happened to emerge from her womb on the very night 300 screaming people died in a fire that consumed a huge Boston nightclub, the Coconut Grove \u2013 which didn\u2019t have adequate fire exits.\u00a0 Obviously, the concatenation of the Triangle Shirt Factory and Coconut Grove fires had a serious impact upon my mom\u2019s psyche.<\/p>\n

Of course those fires had an even greater impact upon the people who heard about them, who lost friends and relatives, were horrified and furious and who insisted that their cities develop building codes and vigilant inspection systems that could prevent future similar disasters.<\/p>\n

This is why we should embrace government and government agencies.\u00a0 This is why we have laws.\u00a0 At painful points in our history, we people have demanded them.<\/p>\n

And not just we ordinary people.\u00a0 While reading a NY Times book review of ‘A Gambling Man – Charles II\u2019s Restoration Game,’ by Jenny Uglow<\/a>, I was intrigued that Charles II, restored to the throne after the British ended their Cromwellian hiatus, worried out loud about the flimsy wood structures of much of London and went out in the streets with his people on a bucket brigade to quench the Great London Fire of 1666.\u00a0 After viewing the devastation, Charles persuaded\u00a0 Parliament to develop strict new building codes.<\/p>\n

Although I can\u2019t say I\u2019ve incorporated King Charles\u2019s and my mom\u2019s nerves into my consciousness, when I used to shop in the original Pearl River Emporium on Canal Street, or the old Century 21 down on Cortlandt, I swear to you I\u2019d hear my late mother\u2019s dry murmur, \u201cThis place is a fire trap.\u201d\u00a0 And I\u2019d (sort of) laugh.\u00a0 But I\u2019d also check out the nearest exit.<\/p>\n

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At birth I learned about our individual need for government agencies and laws. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1175],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-facts-of-life","tag-law-and-government-agencies"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t