I used to blame lawyers for the excesses I observed in the use of lawsuits to resolve social problems. I still do, to an extent. But if lawyers began this mad race to the courthouse, the lawsuit is now officially public property.

Although I'm a lawyer and a law professor, I discovered all of this not through legal research, nor by observation of law reform movements, nor even from my involvement in alternative dispute resolution. I learned this by falling down in the Miami Airport last year.

I was running for a plane, with a bag in each hand, when the lace of one of my high-top sneakers became untied. With the left foot, I stepped on the lace of the right shoe. The right foot, being thus restricted, failed to respond when my leg moved forward. My body, impelled by the speed of my stride and the forward thrust of my bags, did not react to the inability of my right foot to maintain my upright stance. In other words, I fell down.

I landed hard on my right knee, and while the skin over my kneecap was rearranged by the concrete and there was some blood, I can't say I've been permanently disabled. What startled me most was not the fall, nor the resulting pain, but the reaction of bystanders. Once they had ascertained that I didn't need medical assistance, their next thought was that I should sue.

"I saw it," one solicitous lady said to me. "I'll give you my name and address. I'm a witness!" The security guard was summoned and would not let me on the plane until I filed an accident report. They brought me a wheelchair. They even held the plane for me. The profound response of all around me was unmistakable.  A lawsuit had been born.

No one had noticed that I'd tripped on my shoelace, and when I told them, they reacted as if I had said something incredibly stupid. Fault didn't matter one whit to those who understood, without the benefit of law-school educations, that a deep pocket loomed large on the horizon.

When I returned to school, limping, and explained what had occurred, my students joined the chorus of those urging me to go to court. "Sue the shoe manufacturer! Sue the worker who poured the concrete!" they suggested, with visions of strict liability dancing in their brains. They live in a world of exploding pop bottles and faulty flywheels, so they can be forgiven. But the people in the Miami Airport aren't law students, and yet they were similarly preoccupied with the potential for recovery. They had read of wrongs righted for a few million and change. The dollars danced in their brains, too.

I am not unaware of the good that lawsuits have accomplished. But some suits are clearly ridiculous. Children shouldn't sue when there's no prize in the Crackerjacks -- as one little girl did. There are some things that the law simply cannot fix -- or should not be asked to fix. We have come so far from personal responsibility that the court becomes our mother, to whom we turn in response to every injury, no matter how innocent others are in our misfortune, no matter how much our own actions explain the result.

Many lawsuits result from the sense of anomie that we suffer at the hands of an uncaring world. I firmly believe that we could reduce the number of suits by the simple expedient of creating a "public sympathizer." Everyone who has suffered an injustice could visit the public sympathizer, who would commiserate and say: "You've been hurt. You've been wronged. I will post your name on the courthouse door as one who has suffered."

I teach my law students to listen and to counsel. I teach them to care about their clients. I teach them rules of law and hope to instill in them a sense of purpose that is grander than the bottom line. I teach them that lawsuits have costs far beyond the legal fees that rack up on both sides. But I don't know how to teach them that our complex and competitive society requires of them, and of the legal system, much more than can ever be delivered.

Lawyers are doomed to failure when we attempt, whatever our motives, to right every personal wrong. It is this failure that leads, I believe, to criticism of lawyers.

I came away from the Miami Airport with two injuries. The one to my knee has healed. But I wonder when the injury I suffered -- and which our society suffers as a result of the deterioration of the concept of personal responsibility -- will ever be healed. I don't believe that I can fix this injury, and I don't believe the courts can solve it either. Perhaps my primary obligation as a lawyer is to understand it, and to expend my best efforts not to make it any worse.

Ms. Cooper is an associate professor at the law school of the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Copyright Dow Jones & Company Inc Jun 18, 1987

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