Hypocrites: They deserve the shame

What is a hypocrite? It is someone who pretends to stand for something when in actual fact, he doesn’t really believe in what he stands for at all.

There are few more riveting spectacles than the public exposure and humiliation of a major hypocrite. So it was with New York State's fallen governor, Eliot Spitzer. As a former prosecutor, Spitzer relentlessly crusaded against financial, political and moral malefactors, including those involved in prostitution cases. Then he got caught paying thousands of dollars a night to a call girl over a long period of time.

Another infamous hypocrite was the televangelist, Jimmy Swaggart. He was a spiritual play-actor who pretended to be something he was not. He was an ungodly man who masqueraded as a man of God. In short, he was a faker, a phony, and a fraud. He went against the tenets of the Bible. He denounced a fellow evangelist because he knew he was having sex with prostitutes. That evangelist then investigated Swaggart and got proof that he too was having sex with prostitutes.

During Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry, he strongly denounced the practice of religious hypocrisy, reserving His most blistering language not for the harlot or whore, but for the religious hypocrite.

Take a look at the record of a host of lawmakers, lobbyists and even journalists who complain about lawsuits and argue that the rights of injured consumers to go to court should be scaled back because we are too “litigious.” Yet when they or family members are hurt and need compensation for their own injuries, often minor ones, these same individuals do not hesitate to use the courts to obtain compensation, to right a wrong, to hold a wrongdoer accountable or to obtain justice.

ABC News Correspondent John Stossel said on thr 20/20 TV show that there are few things that irk him more than people who file lawsuits. He said, “We all have pain and suffering in our lives. And if each time we hang onto it until we get some kind of compensation, society can’t work.” When speaking before corporate-funded groups such as the Cato and Manhattan Institutes, organizations whose members advocate severely restricting the ability of injured consumers to sue companies for their injuries, he could barely contain his contempt for those who file lawsuits and the attorneys who represent them. But what did John Stossel do when a pro wrestler hit him in 1986 after Stossel implied pro wrestling was fake? He sued. And in settling his lawsuit, Stossel reportedly accepted $200,000 for his pain and suffering.

U.S. Senator Rick Santorum has repeatedly supported limits on consumers’ rights to seek compensation in the courts. In 1994, Santorum sponsored the Comprehensive Family Health Access and Savings Act that would have capped non-economic damages at $250,000. In a 1995 floor speech supporting damages caps, Santorum said, “We have a much too costly legal system. It is one that makes us uncompetitive and inefficient, and one that is not fair to society as a whole. While we may have people, individuals, who hit the jackpot and win the lottery in some cases, that is not exactly what our legal system should be designed to do.” In December 1999 Santorum supported his wife’s medical malpractice lawsuit against her chiropractor for $500,000.

Sterling Cornelius, owner of Cornelius Nurseries and Turkey Creek Farms in Houston and a trustee of the corporate front-group, Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA), is one of the most vocal businessmen complaining about lawsuits and advocating tort restrictions in Texas. However, in 1993, Sterling filed a $100 million lawsuit against DuPont, claiming that its fungicide, Benlate, damaged his companies’ crop and nursery. Among the damages Cornelius sought were $75.3 million in damages under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act as well as additional punitive damages.

In April 1995, Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR) helped lobby for legislation that capped punitive damages, limited governmental and professional liability, undermined joint and several liability and decimated Texas’ Deceptive Claims Practices Act. Yet at the time this legislation passed, TLR Board members Leo Linbeck, Richard Trabulsi and Richard Weekley had themselves previously filed over 60 lawsuits either personally or as business owners. Between 1978 and 1995, Leo Linbeck’s construction company was the plaintiff in at least 37 lawsuits. In one suit, which was settled confidentially, his company sued its own insurance company for triple damages stemming from the deaths of three workers in a construction accident. In another case, settled in November 1988, Linbeck sued for punitive damages. By 1995, Board member Richard Trabulsi had also filed suit numerous times. In 1986, as the owner of Richard’s Liquor and Fine Wines, Trabulsi sued Walgreen’s to force it to stop selling alcohol in Texas. He also filed a personal-injury suit against his company in which the company prevailed. He told the Houston Post, “I have had access to the courts a number of times I had forgotten.” As of 1995, TLR President and co-founder Richard Weekly, head of Weekley Properties and Weekley Development and a partner of David Weekley Homes, had sued six times; his companies had sued 14 times. These men knew that although the laws in Texas changed as a result of their work with TLR and would have restricted them in their lawsuits, that new law didn’t have an effect on their previous lawsuits.

From the 1970s through the 1980s, Aetna Casualty & Surety Company was an outspoken leader in efforts to push for tort restrictions and to create juror scorn for trial lawyers and lawsuits. In the 50s, 60s and 70s, Aetna was among several insurance companies that had launched direct advertising assaults on the civil jury system. Yet Aetna has not hesitated to use the civil jury system when it suits itself, in particular to recoup its own insurance payouts. For example, in 1998, Aetna sued to recover money it had paid to its customer, Merchants Company, for thefts it claimed were caused by lax security by another company, Pendleton Detectives. Aetna opted for a jury, which awarded Aetna $174,000.

The world is full of hypocrites. These people are two-faced, being one person outwardly and publicly, but another person altogether inwardly and privately. They want to suck and blow at the same time. Many of those who attend church every Sunday are the same people who rip off the public by inflating prices for their goods, or offering less in their services than they are paid for. They are the people who are impaired when they drive and yet they publicly denounce drunk driving. They are the men who sweet talk their girlfriends in public but abuse them when they are alone. The list is endless.

I suppose there is a little hypocrisy in all of us but if we intend to lead a very public life, then we can expect little or no sympathy from the rest of the world when our hypocrisy becomes part of the news of the day.