22 May—Evidently our reference in yesterday’s disquisition to ambulance chasers and their wet dreams of chaos, mass injuries, liability suits, and ill-got contingency fees—as well as our use of the common “shyster” epithet—rubbed a shy lawyer the wrong way. Because this morning we found an email addressed to The Monitor and imaginatively signed “Legal Eagle” with a return address that proved to be phony (or at least untraceable by our digitally illiterate editorial staff). This is it:

Dear Paul Mordecai Rosenberg:

I am not an ambulance chaser or a shyster and I resent it. I am an honest attorney that specializes in personal injury law and I litigate only when it is necessary for my clients [sic] benefit. I resent your inference otherwise. Personal injury attorneys are necessary to “make things right” when victims are injured through no faults of their own. Please correct your impression.

Very Truly Yours,
Legal Eagle

Okay, Honest Legal Eagle, Esq. makes a valid point. But why couldn’t he, she, it, or they make it over a valid signature from a valid address? Certainly all lawyers aren’t shysters. We all—well, most of us, anyway—know at least one honest lawyer. And many personal injuries (broadly speaking) deserve to be litigated and the victims fairly compensated.

That said, ambulance chasers are a disreputably parasitic subspecies of personal injury lawyers who deserve every bit of the opprobrium heaped upon them. Simply put, they’re out to make a buck for themselves by exploiting the misfortunes—personal injuries—of whomever they can latch onto. That’s precisely why they chase ambulances.

For the record, does Legal Eagle, Esq. really resent not being an ambulance chaser or a shyster? And the Monitor’s disquisition didn’t infer anything. Any inference was up to the reader. Nor, indeed, did it imply anything. We don’t mince words. Legal Eagle, Esq. should know the difference between “infer” and “imply.” So should everyone.

For the fun of it, what about “shyster”? Well, that’s probably from a mid-19th-century disreputable German lawyer called Scheuster (pronounced Shoyster), reinforced by Scheisser, meaning “defecator” (“shitter” to us) and, by extension, “worthless person.”

And we must thank Legal Eagle, Esq. for his, her, its, or their input and (continuing?) diligent readership . . .