Class Action: Tort Tale

The film Class Action is a piece that does not directly involve a tort tale, however the case portrayed in the movie could easily depicted as one. In order to convert this case into a tort tale, we have to have a brief overview of the events that occurred in the movie. To start, the defense attorney (Maggie Ward) for Argo was the daughter of the attorney who was representing the clients who were suing Argo (Jed Ward). According to the movie, a certain model and year of an Argo (Fictional car company) automobile would catch fire, if the metaphorical “stars aligned”. Finally, the defense attorney ended up helping her father win the case against Argo, proving that she was more interested helping the victims and bring about justice , rather than
Tort tales can be defined as court cases in which the details are extremely exaggerated, crucial information is usually overlooked, the victim and their lawyer are seen as “money hungry” and the actual victim involved in the case is left to face the opinions of the American public (usually negative) (Haltom & McCann, 2004). Now that we have a definition defining what “tort tales” consist of, we can venture into the four elements of a successful tort tale. The four elements are: personalization, dramatization, fragmentation, and normalization (Haltom & McCann, 2004). Personalization is a necessity of an effective tort tale because it makes the stories “hit home” with the public who hear about/ view the case (Haltom & McCann, 2004) and without this element, the public would not be able to relate it to their lives, thus being incapable of drawing much attention. Dramatization is an essential element because it adds a certain “juiciness” to the case and the story,
Blame can be always be placed on one side or the other, simply because we are humans, and humans make mistakes. In this case however, we see something different. We see the victims of accidents suing the Argo automobile company. Now who is the real victim? The plaintiffs are suing Argo for millions of dollars, while Argo used crash test simulators, tested the effectiveness of their airbags, and performed numerous tests on the safety and quality of their vehicles, WITH NO PROBLEMS. All of this within itself costs millions, but the people suing believe their injuries were not their fault. WHAT A JOKE. If we look into depth at the model of the vehicle the plaintiffs are arguing caused their injury, we see that only around three hundred vehicles caught fire. Argo produced thousands of the exact same model vehicle, and more than seventy-five percent were absolutely fine. Also, the lawyer who was representing Argo was the daughter of the lawyer representing the plaintiffs! Am I the only one who sees a conflict of interest here? She helped her father win the case for crying out loud! This tells me that one party is clearly to blame for the accidents and that is the plaintiffs. Jed Ward and his clients are only suing Argo in order to receive a handout. Some people truly do try to take advantage of our legal system (need I bring up the McDonald’s