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2. I was asked to complete some papers in order to register for the
conference.
3. The abundance of fragrance patterns made me feel giddy.
4. On my way to Calcutta the airplane was seized forcibly by
fundamental Muslims.
5. Our talk turned out to be absolutely senseless because we
couldn’t come to an agreement.
6. He failed to take proper advantage of the opportunity to get a
job in a good bank.
7. I’ve been lucky not to run across meddlesome people.
8. He has always been interested in the local dialect, that’s why
he devoted all his energy to carrying out an investigation into
this field.
III. Translate the following sentences into English paying
attention to the active vocabulary:
1. Нам вообще не следовало туда ходить — это было полной
потерей времени.
2. В школьных столовых большое количество еды идет в
отходы.
3. Заполнение анкет — нудное занятие.
4. При покупке этих духов вы получите бесплатный образец
еще одного нового запаха.
5. Примерные вопросы к экзамену обсуждались в течение
всего академического год
6. Сразу же после свадебной церемонии молодоженам было
выдано свидетельство о браке.
7. Врачи советуют этому больному сдавать кровь на анализ
каждые полгода, чтобы избежать осложнений.
8. В предложении нет смысла, так как в нем допущена грубая
стилистическая ошибка.
9. Мальчик старался прислушиваться к советам окру-
жающих, но все его попытки были тщ
10. Группа подростков напала на грузовик с целью грабежа. К
счастью, полиция вовремя вмешалась и предотвратила
ограбление.
а.
етными.
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11. Мой брат с детства любил шпионить. И неудивительно,
что сейчас он служит в разведке.
12. Спорить с этим упрямым человеком — бесполезная трата
сил и времени.
13. Я не люблю иметь дело с назойливыми людьми.
14. Террористы угнали самолеты и направили их на башни
Торгового центра в Нью-Йорке.
15. Бюрократические заморочки одинак
отчаяние как в Америке, так и в России.
16. Имущество принадлежит в равной мере обоим супругам.
17. Извините меня за вторжение, но позвольте спросить: вы
случайно не видели большую белую собаку?
18. Жизнь полна огорчений и радостей.
DISCUSSION
1. How do you understand the notion “red tape”? How do you
feel about it?
2. What institutions are associated with red tape?
3. Can state institutions exist without red tape? Justify your point
of view.
4. Who suffers from
5. Why it is so widely spread in Russia? In the U.S.?
6. Is there any remedy against red tape? What would you suggest
to eliminate or at least reduce it?
red tape? How does it affect people’s lives?
ово приводят людей в
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Unit 4
LAW AND ORDER
PREREADING
Answer the questions:
1. What films or TV dramas can you remember which featured
a courtroom scene? What was the case about? What
happened in the courtroom? What kind of people were
involved?
2. In general, what images of lawyers do you get from books,
television, and the movies?
3. To what extend do movies and books present a realistic
picture of lawyers and courtroom scenes, in your opinion?
4. Have you ever been present during a trail? If so, what did
you observe and how did you feel?
TEXT 1
SO SUE ME
I have a friend in Britain, an academic, who was recently approached
by lawyers working for an American company to be an expert witness
for a case they were handling. They told him they wanted to fly the lead
attorney and two assistants to London to meet him.
‘Wouldn’t it be simpler and cheaper if I flew to New York
instead?’ my friend suggested.
‘Yes,’ he was told without hesitation, ‘but this way we can bill the
client for the cost of three trips.’
And there you have the American legal mind at work.
Now I have no doubt that a large number of American lawyers do
wonderfully worthwhile things that fully justify charging their clients
$150 an hour, which I gather is the going rate here. But the trouble is
that there are too many of them. In fact the United States has more
lawyers than all the rest of the world put together: almost 800,000 of
them. We now boast 300 lawyers for every 100,000 citizens. Britain,
by contrast, has eighty-two, Japan a mere eleven.
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And of course all those lawyers need work. Most states now allow
lawyers to advertise, and many of them most enthusiastically do. You
cannot watch TV for half an hour without encountering at least one
commercial showing a sincere-looking lawyer saying: ‘Hi, I’m Vinny
Slick of Bent and Oily Law Associates. If you’ve suffered an injury
at work, or been in a vehicular accident, or just feel like having some
extra money, come to me and we’ll find someone to sue.’
Americans, as is well known, will sue at the drop of a hat. In fact,
I daresay someone somewhere has sued over a dropped hat, and won
$20 million for the pain and suffering it caused. There really is a
sense that if something goes wrong for whatever reason and you are
anywhere in the vicinity, then you ought to collect a pot of money.
This was neatly illustrated a couple of years ago when a chemical
plant in Richmond, California, suffered an explosion which spewed
fumes over the town. Within hours, 200 lawyers and their
representatives had descended on the excited community, handing out
business cards and advising people to present themselves at the local
hospital. Twenty thousand residents eagerly did so.
News footage of the event makes it look like some kind of openair party. Of the 20,000 happy, smiling, seemingly very healthy
people who lined up for examination at the hospital’s emergency
room, just twenty were actually admitted. Although the number of
proven injuries was slight, to say the :least, 70,000 townspeople —
virtually all of them — filed claims. The company agreed to a $180
million settlement. Of this, the lawyers got $40 million.
Every year over 90 million lawsuits are filed in this extravagantly
litigious country — that’s one for every two and a half people — and
many of these are what might charitably be called ambitious. As I
write, two parents in Texas are suing a high school baseball coach for
benching their son during a game, claiming humiliation and extreme
mental anguish. In Washington State, meanwhile, a man with heart
problems is suing the local dairies ‘because their milk cartons did not
warn him about cholesterol’. I am sure you read about the woman in
California who sued the Walt Disney Company after she and her
family were mugged in a car park at Disneyland. A central part of the
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suit was that her grandchildren suffered shock and trauma when they
were taken behind the scenes to be comforted and they saw Disney
characters taking off their costumes. The discovery that Mickey
Mouse and Goofy were in fact real people inside costumes was
apparently too much for the poor tykes.
That case was dismissed, but elsewhere people have won fortunes
out of all proportion to any pain or loss they might actually have
suffered. Recently there was a much-publicized case in which an
executive at a Milwaukee brewery recounted the racy plot of a
Seinfeld television show to a female colleague, who took offence
and reported him for sexual harassment. The brewery responded by
sacking the fellow, and he responded by suing the brewery. Now I
don’t know who deserved what in this case — it sounds to me,
frankly, like they all wanted a good sound spanking — but the
upshot is that the sacked executive was awarded $26.6 million,
roughly 400,000 times his annual salary, by a sympathetic (i.e.,
demented) jury.
Allied with the idea that lawsuits are a quick way to a fortune is
the interesting and uniquely American notion that no matter what
happens, someone else must be responsible. So if, say, you smoke
eighty cigarettes a day for fifty years and eventually get cancer, then
it must be everyone else’s fault but your own, and you sue not only
the manufacturer of your cigarettes, but the wholesaler, the retailers,
the haulage firm that delivered the cigarettes to the retailer, and so
on. One of the most extraordinary features of the American legal
system is that it allows plaintiffs to sue people and companies only
tangentially connected to the alleged complaint.
Because of the way the system works (or more accurately doesn’t
work) it is often less expensive for a company or institution to settle
out of court than to let the matter proceed to trial. I know a woman
who slipped and fell while entering a department store on a rainy
day and, to her astonishment and gratification, was offered a more
or less instant settlement of $2,500 if she would sign a piece of
paper agreeing not to sue. She signed.
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The cost of all this to society is enormous — several billion
dollars a year at least. New York City alone spends $200 million a
year settling ‘slip and fall’ claims — people tripping over kerbs and
the like. According to a recent ABC Television documentary on
America’s runaway legal system, because of inflated product liability
costs consumers in the United States pay $500 more than they need to
for every car they buy, $100 more for football helmets, and $3,000
more for heart pace-makers. According to the documentary, they
even pay a little on top (as it were) for haircuts because one or two
distressed customers successfully sued their barbers after being given
the sort of embarrassing trims that I receive as a matter of routine. All
of which, naturally, has given me an idea. I am going to go and
smoke eighty cigarettes, then slip and fall while drinking highcholesterol milk and relating the plot of a Seinfeld show to a passing
female in the Disneyland car park, and then I’ll call Finny Slick and
see if we can strike a deal. I don’t expect to settle for less than $2.5
billion — and that’s before we’ve even started talking about my latest
haircut.
NOTE
Pay attention to the difference in the following British and
American spellings:
AmE
curb
cf. BrE kerb — бордюр
CULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS
Look up the following entries in the Dictionary of U. S. Life and
Culture (Жизнь и культура США: Лингвострановедческий
словарь) or other dictionaries and encyclopedias:
California
community
Disneyland
Goofy
Mickey Mouse
Milwaukee
66
sexual harassment
Texas
Walt Disney Company
Washington State
Cultural Note
Suing is especially common in the U.S. One can sue a doctor who
has not given proper treatment. Employees may sue their employers if
they have an accident at work. One may sue a driver who has caused a
traffic accident. Even a homeowner can be sued if a visitor falls and
gets hurt due to the owner’s carelessness (Longman Dictionary of
English Language and Culture).
COMPREHENSION CHECK
Answer the questions:
1. How many lawyers are there in the U.S. according to the
statistics?
2. What makes lawyers advertise their service?
3. What causes Americans to sue anybody for anything? Give
examples from the text.
4. Is it profitable to be a lawyer in the States?
5. Would you agree that such a legal system can make American
society perfect?
6. Which, in your opinion, is the most ridiculous case depicted in
the text?
7. Comment the following phrases: “…lawsuits are a quick way
to a fortune”; “…
be responsible.”
8. How does the number of lawyers and lawsuits characterize the
American legal system?
9. What does the author think of American lawyers? What is the
general attitude towards lawyers in the U.S.? Find American
jokes about them.
no matter what happens, someone else must
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ACTIVE VOCABULARY
lawyer n
witness n
case n — a question to be decided in court:
to cost v
to charge v
— a person who is trained and qualified to advise people
about the law, represent them in court, and to write legal
documents. In the U.S. a lawyer can be also called
and there are no differences between the two.
— 1. a person who sees something happen and is able to
describe it to other people:
gives evidence in court:
as (a) witness for the defense / prosecution.
next week.; a court case; to win / lose a case.
— the sum of money that somebody is ordered to pay for
lawyers, etc. in a legal case:
— to ask in payment for goods and services:
do you charge for a room? The company doesn’t charge for
delivery.
charge v
have to make a small charge for refreshments.; admission
charges.
you paying cash?’ ‘No, it’ll be a charge.
made by the police that somebody has committed a crime:
criminal charges; a murder / an assault charge.
— 1. the price asked or paid for goods or services:
2. [
AmE
, informal] = charge account, credit account:
a witness to the killing.
a defense / prosecution witness; to appear
The case will be heard
He was ordered to pay £2 000 costs.
’ 3. an official claim
an attorney
2. a person who
How much
We
‘Are
rate n — 1. a measurement of the speed at which something happens:
Most people walk at an average rate of 5 kilometers an hour
measurement of the number of times something happens or exists
during a particular period
unemployment; the annual crime / divorce rate; a high
success / failure rate.
citizen n —
particular country:
European Union.
citizens of Budapest.
1. a person who has the legal right to belong to a
British citizens living in other parts of the
2. a person who lives in a particular place:
: a high / low / rising rate of
. 2. a
the
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injury n —
in an accident:
the head; a head injury.
harm done to a person’s or an animal’s body, for example
serious injury / injuries; minor injuries; injury to
to suffer an injury —
to sue v —
somebody in court about something that they have said or done to
harm you
somebody for $10 million (= in order to get money from
somebody); to sue somebody for damages.
formally ask for something, esp. in court:
emergency room —
urgent treatment are taken:
emergency room.
to claim v —
is your legal right to own or to have it:
never claimed.
claim n —
believes they have to something, esp. property, land, etc.:
had no claim on the land.
to file a claim
can be officially recorded and dealt with:
a claim / complaint / petition / lawsuit.
1. (somebody for something) — to make a claim against
: to sue somebody for breach of contract; to sue
to demand or ask for something because you believe it
claim (on / to something) a right that somebody
(for something) — to present something so that it
to get hurt.
2. (for something) — to
to sue for divorce.
the part of a hospital where people who need
The victims were rushed to an
A lot of lost property is
to file for divorce; to file
They
lawsuit (n) —
or an organization can make in court:
his record company.
jury (n) —
members of the public who listen to the facts of a case in a court
and decide whether or not somebody is guilty of a crime:
members of the jury; to be / sit / serve on a jury; the right to trial
by jury.
competition.
a claim or complaint against somebody that a person
He filed a lawsuit against
(also
2. a group of people who decide who is the winner of a
panel, jury panel
esp. in
AmE
) 1. a group of
69
plaintiff n —
somebody in court
[law] a person who makes a formal complaint against
court n —
crimes, etc. are judged:
in a court, esp. those who make the decisions, such as the judge
and jury:
to settle out of court — come to an agreement without going to
court.
trial n
often a jury, to decide if somebody accused of a crime is guilty or
not:
WORD COMBINATIONS AND PHRASES
at the drop of a hat —
to strike a deal —
both sides have an advantage
ASSIGNMENTS
Translate into Russian:
1. Who were the
2. Delivery is free of charge.
3. She’s Italian by birth but is now an Australian citizen.
4. Two players are out of the team because of injury.
5. They threatened to sue if the work was not completed.
6. Would you like to put that on your charge?
7. When you’re old, people treat you like a second-class citizen.
8. I’ll sue them for every penny they got.
9. She has more claim to the book’s success than anybody (= she
10. The jury has / have returned a verdict of guilty.
1. the place where legal trials take place and where
the civil / criminal courts.
Please tell the court what happened.
— a formal examination of evidence in court by a judge and
a murder trial.
immediately; without hesitating
to make an agreement with somebody in which
witnesses of the accident?
deserves to be praised for it).
2. the people
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