The Impossible Act

The engine wouldn’t turn over. It wasn’t the car, not really. It was just that the act of turning the key-the simple, decisive act required to move from the concrete bunker of the parking garage and back into the world-felt impossible. She sat there, the seatbelt already clicked across her chest, breathing the stale, metallic air that only underground structures seem to cultivate.

They had promised resolution. They had used the word ‘reparation.’ But all she felt was raw, re-exposed nerve endings. The faulty medical device had caused the physical injury; the legal process was causing the psychological hemorrhage. This is the core tragedy we are finally beginning to articulate: For many, the lawsuit is not the path to healing. It is the second trauma.

Design for Transaction, Not Validation

We enter the adversarial system-our only real mechanism for seeking justice on a large scale-expecting a clean fight, or at least a fair one. We assume that because we are the injured party, the process will be structured to acknowledge and validate that injury. This is perhaps the greatest delusion our civil system perpetrates.

I’ve watched it happen dozens of times. The moment the litigation begins, the focus shifts entirely away from the faulty product or the negligent action that caused the harm, and onto the victim’s previous 15 years of existence.

A Profound Invasion

Did you ever miss a credit card payment? Did you ever tell a therapist you were feeling depressed? Did you have an argument with your sibling three years before the injury even occurred? Every vulnerability you possess, every secret held close, becomes discoverable ammunition.

I used to believe it was just the unavoidable cost of doing business in a courtroom. I thought, *We have to tolerate the cruelty to achieve the compensation.* I was wrong.

The Case of Ruby A.J.

Think about Ruby A.J. Ruby was a brilliant seed analyst, working with high-yield crops out of the Southwest. Her original claim stemmed from a widely used industrial contaminant exposure that devastated her health. Her professional life was defined by precision and analysis.

The rest? They drilled into the specifics of her childhood trauma, her parents’ difficult divorce 25 years ago, and even challenged the $575 fine she paid for an outdated car registration in 2017. Why? Because if they can suggest that Ruby A.J. has a history of poor judgment, or a pre-existing emotional condition, they can suggest that her current distress is not a result of their contamination, but a manifestation of her ‘fragile self.’

The Calculated Wound

“

This is where the second injury occurs. The first injury was physical, unexpected, an accident of fate and corporate negligence. The second injury is calculated, intentional, and sanctioned by the legal system itself.

It is the moment you realize that your claim to justice requires you to hand over the keys to your entire interior life, trusting people who are explicitly paid to doubt your suffering.

The Ethics of Access

This systemic failure forces us to consider the ethics of access. How can we possibly empower victims to pursue justice when the mechanism for doing so is inherently re-traumatizing? The initial intake process, the screening, the gathering of early information-all of this must be handled with the utmost empathy and efficiency because every single interaction contributes to the overall burden.

I’ve made mistakes in the past, too. I used to advise clients to simply compartmentalize-to view the deposition as an intellectual game, divorced from their emotional reality. I see now that was naive. You cannot ask a person who is seeking justice for a violation of their body to voluntarily compartmentalize the violation of their soul.

Fragmentation vs. Integration

There is a critical contradiction in our approach to this area of law. We tell victims they deserve compensation to help them move forward, but the process we use guarantees that they will remain firmly rooted in the past, constantly digging up old wounds to prove their current distress is ‘authentic.’ It actively interferes with the healing process.

That tension-the need to perform your pain to prove your worth-is what destroys lives all over again.

Beyond Transactional Closure

We need to fundamentally adjust our expectations and, more importantly, our support systems. The concept of ‘healing through justice’ is a beautiful ideal, but for the majority, the process delivers transactional closure, not restorative peace. We must stop framing the lawsuit as the cure and start seeing it for what it often is: a difficult, necessary surgery that leaves deep scars, requiring intensive post-operative care.

The money, if it ever came, would be a necessary bandage, perhaps, but it could never rewind the 45 minutes they spent trying to convince her that her past sadness was more to blame than their defective product. The price of justice should never include the deliberate re-injury of the victim. We must be better advocates for the person, not just the case.