By LARRY VETTER
In the summer of 1965 at the age of 12, my first job was mowing neighborhood lawns.
I lived in a very blue collar town on Long Island and for lack of a better description, we were lower middle class.
I didn’t make much money, but I learned about quoting prices and fair market value (of course at 12, these terms eluded me).
From that point on I always did something to earn money, from a variety of after-school part-time jobs to ultimately working full time.
I retired in August of 2019 after which my wife and I left Long Island and moved to Chestertown and the Eastern Shore.
I think it is fair to say I have a fair amount of work experience.
Throughout my working career, I predominantly worked for business to business organizations and when I retired, I retired from my own company which I had for 12 years and was business to business as well.
During my early days of working full time (the 1970s), I was often in positions of having to issue quotes for services. At that time, these quotes more often than not, consisted of a verbal quote given over a phone; a faceless customer getting a quote from a faceless me.
I jotted a note, which was passed on to the billing department.
If the wrong amount was charged to the customer, you can bet that the customer would immediately get on the phone.
I kept my notes and ensured the billing was corrected and naturally apologized whether or not the mistake was mine.
Everyone was happy and we moved on.
As years progressed, the verbal quote was backed up with a written quote, which ultimately was changed to a quote signed by me. We moved on to a quote signed by the customer.
At first much of this was done after the service was rendered, but then it had to be accomplished prior to the work.
Next came proof of insurance with a quote, then notarized quotes, then qualified insurances often necessitating a rider to the policy.
It continued on with submitting W-2 forms with quotes.
Everyone looked at you cross-eyed if you dared to give a verbal quote.
So why the change?
Simply, it was litigation.
Giving your word meant nothing. Insufficient verbiage in quotes could mean a large loss of money.
It got to the point where the legalities of the project superseded the actual work itself. As long as you were legally covered, not much else mattered.
This led to what I think of as the modern method of operations, particularly by large corporations. That is the running up of invoices, then declaring bankruptcy of that business, resulting in never having to pay those run-up invoices.
I have often heard it said that this is smart business, and the larger businesses that regularly did this were simply intelligent.
That all sounds fine until you are the small business that is owed a great deal of money and becomes the victim of this bankruptcy.
Yes, you can sue, but that requires even more money with very little guarantee that you have a shot of winning.
The issues I have described were not in just one type of industry, but ran the gamut from manufacturing, construction, transportation, medical and so forth.
All industries had to protect themselves from litigation rather than focus on what they did to earn a living.
I have always believed that rather than making companies more careful and better with their products and services, it actually hurt the end product because it was no longer necessary to provide something good as long as it was able to avoid litigation.
Let’s now segue into politics.
We are currently seeing this frenzied level of litigation in our governments. States are suing the feds and vice versa. Local counties and townships are suing feds and states.
Policies and terms are continually being redefined to either avoid litigation or to promote it.
I recently read in the New York Times that large law firms are donating more time than ever to the federal government for legal purposes, donations which I am sure will be very well reciprocated in the end.
The just paraphrased New York Times is being sued by both Democrats and Republicans alike of a whole variety of articles.
Our three branches of government seem to be in constant litigation, and power seems to be shifting almost daily.
So here we sit in 2025, the food we eat, items we buy, homes we live in, things we do and believe, our necessities and free time pursuits, our relationships and our communities are in a never ending flux of laws and lawsuits.
These laws are mostly vague allowing for endless trials with results that continually contradict each other, resulting in more trials and more contradictory verdicts.
Seems to me the only ones making money are the lawyers while the rest of us are footing the bill.
I’m not certain where this goes or if it ever ends.
I am tired of the hamster wheel of justice and I am ashamed of myself and my fellow citizens for allowing this and tolerating it.
Whatever happened to trying to do the right thing?
What has happened to honoring your word and taking responsibility for your errors and correcting them without being mandated to do so.
Just because something is lawful or legal doesn’t make it right. Sometimes simpler is better and being noble is a good aspiration.
Larry Vetter writes from Chestertown.