Chapter Four
“ATLA Shrugged:  Why Personal Injury Lawyers Are Not Public Defenders of Their Own Causes”
 
Chapter Four explains the instrumental considerations that have propelled plaintiffs’ attorneys – the most formidable foes of pop tort reformers – to “run silent, run deep” rather than to “go public.”  Saddled with image problems and internal divisions, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) and other defenders of attorneys for plaintiffs have tended to prefer legislative lobbying, litigation, and other relatively quiet, low-visibility strategies and tactics.  At these defensive “inside” stratagems, plaintiffs’ attorneys have been reasonably successful. This success, however, has also meant that plaintiffs’ attorneys have to a large extent retreated roundly from public battles, leaving tort reformers is a very advantageous position to dominate mass political discourse and perception.  Little wonder, then, that tort reform imagery suffuses U. S. popular and political culture.