Reasonable Doubt: Sometimes seeking justice is bad for your health

    1 of 1 2 of 1

      At its best, the law provides people with an avenue to solve disputes and access justice. At our best, lawyers are problem solvers. This means that we often see clients during the worst moment in their lives: a divorce, they’ve hurt someone or been hurt, they’re being evicted, they’ve been arrested, and so on. The stress of their legal problem is, ironically, often exacerbated by the stress of going through the litigation process. Sometimes seeking justice is bad for your health.

      Most people want to have some control over important decisions and events in their life. But outcomes in litigation—especially at trial—are often difficult to predict. The reality is, people who are in the right can still lose in court. People who are innocent can be convicted and sent to jail. Being involved in a legal proceeding often means living with that uncertainty for years at a time.

      Stress can cause a host of health problems, including anxiety, stomach problems, high blood pressure, muscle aches, and trouble sleeping. According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, two-thirds of office visits to family doctors are for stress-related symptoms.

      I spoke with Dr. Maelor Vallance, a forensic psychiatrist who has been providing expert opinions for criminal and personal injury cases for more than 50 years. He has been involved in thousands of court cases.

      The health effects of litigation are perhaps most pronounced in personal injury lawsuits. The connection between pain and stress is well established in medical literature. Put simply, stress is bad for recovering. Dr. Vallance explains:

      Any intense negative emotion can prolong things. Being afraid of going to the dentist, for example, can make the pain worse. By the time people get to me, they’ve had to jump through the hoops of the litigation and can be very angry…in some people, the litigation can open a wellspring of anger from previous life experiences.

      Merely resolving the lawsuit can improve someone’s pain as the situational, litigation stress is removed.

      While litigation can prolong someone’s recovery, someone who is not recovering is also more likely to be involved in litigation because they have more to lose by not suing. For these people, the litigation can have a compounding effect on their already poor prognosis.

      Dr. Vallance explains that people have a spectrum of personality types. Some personality types lead people to be more litigious than others. People with rigid personalities—meaning that they have obsessional or perfectionistic tendencies—and people who have tendencies towards paranoia and conspiracy theories are more drawn to litigation. They may be less willing to compromise and settle their lawsuits for anything but a perfect outcome and are more likely to focus and obsess over small details. For these people, justice can come at the steep cost of health and happiness.

      In many cases, litigation is a necessary evil and taking a firm stand can be important. But usually both parties end up compromising their claim to some extent. Ironically, mediators will often tell parties to lawsuits that often the measure of a fair settlement is when both parties leave dissatisfied.

      Dr. Vallance says that it is important for people involved in lawsuits to manage their expectations and to not have a black or white view of winning or losing and securing the perfect outcome. Lawsuits will not make you whole, even if you win. There is a price to litigation. And it is not just the price of a lawyer. It is the cost of learning to live with the things that litigation cannot fix.

      Joseph Fearon is a civil litigation lawyer at Preszler Law Firm practising in the areas of personal injury and commercial litigation. Reasonable Doubt appears on Straight.com on Fridays. You can send your questions for the column to its writers at straight.reasonable.doubt@gmail.com. Follow @JWCFearon on Twitter.

      A word of caution: You should not act or rely on the information provided in this column. It is not legal advice. To ensure your interests are protected, retain or formally seek advice from a lawyer. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Stevens Virgin or the lawyers of Stevens Virgin.

      Comments