This one is for you. I decided I will respond to your following paragarph of a post you made yesterday... It is an important issue that needs a bit of explanation... You said...

"That wisdom gave me faith in the legal system, he explained it in understandable terms."..

I have been tenacious in saying here time and again that the legal process is not a crap shoot; nor it is true that the one with deepest pockets can buy themselves some "Justice" they find in the Court House Hall ways...

It is a very complex system designed to remove conflicts from the streets, (we don't act any longer like the WILD WILD WEST, or Bosnia, or Middle East), where generations of populace are killed because of some disagreement started thousand of years ago. We take our conflicts to Court, and have the professinals , defuse it over a period of time and come down with a decision under specific guidlines established through Laws and case law precedents.

In essence, every case that goes to trial and reaches the Supreme Court, which by precedent is the final arbiter of issues, is a bloodless REVOLUTION in the making...

It is an ingenious system and we owe it all to the genious young man named HAMILTON...

The decision by Judge WADDUP had several clercks working on it, under his direction, long before it got on his desk for his signature. And the sum total of their actions were governed by the fact that they had to take the facts before them and apply the law as described above to those facts to reach their conclusions that were authored as the DECISION by the Judge...

In fact the attorneys are required to submit instructions to be given to the jury by the judge telling them if you find this then you are to decide like that...

These instructions are given to a jury by the judge after the parties present their case, and in essence circumscribe the potential of a run away jury. By the same token the clerks and the Judge are bound by law to follow precedent and cannot decide a case based on their personal views and idiosincrecies...

I decided to give you this ANSWER to make you and all understand that the Legal system is a complex social engineering tool and by and large it works well. But it is little understood by the Man in the Street. That is why most of the times Lawyers are the But of Jokes, and even though every one talks how bad lawyers are, but you have never heard a person who has had good results in a law suit deriding his lawyer. I am sure EDIG is happy with their lawyers.

I decided to become a lawyer after my graduation with a BS degree by happening to read a 180 page small paper back called THE NATURE OF THE JUDICIAL PROCESS. The book was pulished by Yale University Press, and was a compendium of a series of lectures given by JUSCTICE BEJAMIN CARDOZO, one of the most brilliant minds to sit on the SUPREME COURT of United States, at Yale University.

You have an inquisitive mind and I highly recommend you read this book. It will give you an insight how the system is supposed to work...

Good Luck to everyone...

Gil...