"the worst form of ambulance-chasing"

Comment: Let the lawsuits begin!

Question of liability rises

The state's liability is limited by law to $1 million, regardless of how many people were injured.
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No one involved in the bridge's construction or design could be sued successfully, said attorney Robert King, of the Lommen Abdo law firm in Minneapolis. State law generally places a six-year statute of limitations on a lawsuit against contractors, he added.
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Given those limitations, attorneys likely will focus on the private entities involved in the bridge's maintenance, particularly if state and federal investigators find that private firms bear any of the blame for the collapse. At least two firms and one university study have worked on or analyzed the bridge in recent years.

Comment: What follows is the worst part of the story:

Omar Jamal of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis said he has received at least a dozen telephone calls from law firms, most of them local, since it became public knowledge that a pregnant Somali woman, Sadiya Sahal, and her 2-year-old daughter, Hanah Mohamed, were among those missing after the collapse.

The calls started coming about 4 p.m. Thursday, less than 24 hours after the collapse, and haven't stopped, Jamal said. Some of the attorneys have asked for telephone numbers and other personal information about Sahal's family, Jamal said.

"This is the worst form of ambulance-chasing," Jamal said. "The divers are still in the river looking, and the attorneys keep calling us."

Comment: Image from Laymen’s views of law in oral narrative. Quote: The trouble with lawyer jokes are: Lawyers don't think they are funny ... and civilians don't think they are jokes.