Yes, Mike, I live in the US and have recent personal experience with two cases in which a family member was involved and held the winning hand in both. The case you mentioned was personal injury, and it's true that many lawyers are willing to take personal injury cases for the greater part of the settlement. I rather doubt that would be true if a customer tried to sue over the lab where a DNA test was processed. I was personally involved in a third suit when I was a graduate student at UVA and another student ran into my car at an intersection. Although the policemen gave him a ticket, he hired a lawyer and beat the charge, then sued me for damages to his car. When informed of the circumstances, my insurance company decided to fight rather than pay and he lost the case. He had admitted in a telephone call first to my mother and then to me that the accident was his fall, so our testimony carried the day. But you are correct in thinking my remarks were meant to impugn the legal system. The truth is that with very few exceptions (most of which are personal injury cases), the cost of filing suit, whether or not the case actually goes to court, is more expensive than most cases are worth. My state follows the American Rule which makes recovery of legal costs difficult or impossible even for the winner. Did you ever read Bleak House? I have a copy of a letter written by an American ancestor who said much the same a couple of decades before Bleak House was written. Lindsey