{"product_id":"9780226314693","title":"Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis","description":"In recent years, stories of reckless lawyers and greedy citizens have given the legal system, and victims in general, a bad name. Many Americans have come to believe that we live in the land of the litigious, where frivolous lawsuits and absurdly high settlements reign.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Scholars have argued for years that this common view of the depraved ruin of our civil legal system is a myth, but their research and statistics rarely make the news. William Haltom and Michael McCann here persuasively show how popularized distorted understandings of tort litigation (or tort tales) have been perpetuated by the mass media and reform proponents. \u003ci\u003eDistorting the Law\u003c\/i\u003e lays bare how media coverage has sensationalized lawsuits and sympathetically portrayed corporate interests, supporting big business and reinforcing negative stereotypes of law practices.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Based on extensive interviews, nearly two decades of newspaper coverage, and in-depth studies of the McDonald's coffee case and tobacco litigation, \u003ci\u003eDistorting the Law\u003c\/i\u003e offers a compelling analysis of the presumed litigation crisis, the campaign for tort law reform, and the crucial role the media play in this process.","brand":"University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47084194070768,"sku":"9780226314693","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780226314693_p0.jpg?v=1763674219","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780226314693","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}