$810/hour

That's the fee this repugnant tort lawyer wants to charge the San Francisco school district. There are a couple of particularly choice bits from the article, which I'd like to highlight. Let's leave the slimy lawlizard alone for a minute; we'll get to him shortly.

First, read this sentence and see if anything leaps out at you:

for every $1 million, the district could hire 14 teachers, or 14 social workers, or 14 nurses, or 14 librarians, or 14 counselors, or 14 instructional aides, or 13 bus drivers or a year's worth of school supplies for 25,000 elementary school kids.

So, let me see if I've got this straight: it costs the district $71,428.57 in salary, benefits, and overhead to hire one teacher? Fair enough, though I still think it's a little underpaid, especially in San Francisco. However, their equivalent costs for a bus driver are $76,923.08?! Uh... how does that work? Is there a secret university degree for bus drivers that we're all unaware of? Hell, I think I'll quit engineering and go apply to drive a bus.

Moving along, let's talk about the ludicrous amount of money this slimy little tort lawyer believes himself to be worth. To be exact, $810 per hour. I would like to publicly challenge Mr. Allen to defend himself on this, especially as his firm claims to work pro bono. I cannot imagine the heights of arrogance someone must climb in order to actually believe their time is worth more per hour than the average working American makes in an entire week. If a world-famous neurosurgeon were to tell me that he charges $1000 per hour for his surgical skills, I'd simply nod and say "well, certainly; you do something that extremely few people can do, and it saves lives. You're worth every penny--especially if I'm paying you for a family member or myself."

However, when a tort lawyer who, by definition, produces nothing and contributes nothing to society, says he's worth anything even approaching that amount, I have to assume he's either a stand-up comedian or stark raving mad. Because anyone who actually believes that... Oh, wait. Let's look at a quote from Guy Wallace, one of Mr. Allen's compatriots-in-crime, as he attempts to justify this extortion:

Wallace insisted the district had more than enough resources to cover its legal bills -- including at least $100 million in surplus real estate and $50 million collected from settling other lawsuits in the past year.

So, not only do these people actually believe they are entitled to taxpayer property, and not only are they greedy and unethical, but they're also ghouls, inasmuch as they are preying upon the results achieved by other slimeballs in their so-called "profession." But hey, Mr. Wallace is a regular bargain at only $522/hour.

Tort reform now! Make these thieving bastards start working for a living like the rest of us.