Lawyers' solicitation enrages Georgia town

[douglas9]

Source: Associated Press

PORT WENTWORTH, GA. — Crews are still working to douse the flames from a sugar refinery explosion, still trying to reach the last of the victims' bodies, yet already the out-of-town lawyers are swooping in.

"If you or a loved one was injured in this explosion, you may have valuable legal rights," reads a come-on from one New York-based legal firm that snapped up the Internet domain name www.sugarrefinery_explosion.com.

The plant's owners have lawyers, a Texas attorney notes in a newspaper ad, adding: "Shouldn't you?"

While such solicitations are nothing new after major disasters, many residents in this town of 5,000 and beyond have been disgusted by the audacity of lawyers trying to round up clients before the blaze at the refinery — which continued to burn Wednesday, six days after the blast — could be extinguished.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5540220.html

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[gratuitous]

2. Funny thing about this "outraged" town

The only "outraged" folks directly quoted in the story is a local restaurant owner and a Republican member of the Georgia House . . . from Atlanta (though, of course, he's not identified as a Republican). I think that hardly makes the town "outraged," but I'm sure the threshold for outrage on certain subjects is pretty low at the Houston Chronicle.

There is a pertinent quote from the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, but no reports (only rumors) of actual transgressions by personal injury lawyers. My, my, such an awful lot of "outrage" manufactured out of nothing. Who said all domestic manufacturing has gone overseas?