The Light in the Darkness

The power of advocacy in the eternal fight against injustice

Fighting for justice often feels like a losing battle. Each case brings unrelenting challenges, and after every hard-fought victory, there’s always another injustice to confront. Every week, I encounter a new complaint that describes a family’s suffering at the hands of a negligent corporation, and every day, I encounter another obstacle in the way of helping them. Some defendants escape justice by structuring shell companies to avoid liability. Sometimes judges stretch the letter of the law to unravel a just verdict. All too often, the law doesn’t provide a pathway to recovery. If it feels like there will never be an end to injustice, perhaps it’s because there never will be. It can be frustrating and disheartening.

When I feel frustrated and disheartened, I am often reminded of my visit to the Holocaust Galleries at the Imperial War Museum in London more than twenty years ago. After exploring the labyrinthine hallways filled with exhibits detailing the horrors of the holocaust, I felt overwhelmed, disgusted, and hopeless. The last thing I saw before exiting the museum was a floor-to-ceiling plaque that read, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Injustice flourishes when witnesses and bystanders remain silent and refuse to fight against it.

Some time ago, I attended a community theater production of “A Christmas Carol.” Near the end of the play, after Ebenezer Scrooge encountered the Ghost of Christmas Future and begged for a second chance at life, the stage fell silent and the theater went dark for dramatic effect. Just then, some buffoon in the audience decided to check his cell phone, which basked his face in light and shattered the emotional continuity of the scene. A single light can defeat the darkness.

I met a young plaintiff’s attorney not long after he opened his law firm. A family came to him because the oldest son suffered a life-altering traumatic brain injury. Liability was clear, but no one wanted the case because the defendant was a municipality, and sovereign immunity capped damages at a tragically low sum. Even if this lawyer could get the case to trial, and even if he won, he would have to lobby the state legislature to pay just a fraction of a jury award. He took the case. Five years later, he won a remarkable eight-figure verdict, and he has a good shot at getting lawmakers to authorize a payment well in excess of the sovereign immunity caps. A single light can defeat the darkness.

The universe, as I understand it, is mostly dark, yet the night sky is punctuated by specs of light from stars trillions of miles away. I once stood on a ranch in Nebraska on a cloudless, moonless night, and once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the entire sky seemed to glow. The world, as I understand it, is filled with injustice, but I’m lucky to keep company with a constellation of advocates – legal and otherwise – who fight back. Advocacy means refusing to be a bystander; our duty is to fight. We may never eradicate injustice, but as long as advocates refuse to stand by and do nothing, injustice will never prevail.