Contratación con empresas promocionales de personas con discapacidad

The next step in the research design process was to operationally define hysteria and greed. According to Singleton and Straits, the choice of operational definitions is traditionally a matter of creativity, judgment and practicality. The quality of the definition is determined by the

reliability, validity, and levels of measurement of the construct. 60 Following a review of the literature, I chose to lump the concept of hysteria, mass psychogenic disease, mass contagion, mass sociogenic disease, or functional somatic syndrome, into one all-encompassing theoretical construct, i.e., hysteria: an illness with symptoms that are diffuse, nonspecific, and ambiguous and prevalent in a healthy, non-patient population.

The data sources provided the necessary documentation to establish indicators for the various concepts. Hysteria is a “psychiatric condition characterized by excitability, anxiety, and the simulation of organic disorders."61 Since most plaintiffs claimed health problems as a result of living near the Sewerage and Water Board treatment facility, an excellent indicator of “organic disorder” was determined by examining each individual plaintiff claim form (part of the public record in this case).

After reading through claim form after claim form, it became apparent to me that the plaintiffs' symptoms appeared to be common ailments that affected everyone in the general population. Using Access 97, I prepared a database with all of the answers from each plaintiff claim form, being careful to use the exact same wording used in the claim form. The database provides an accurate picture of each individual claim form and makes it possible to make inferences about hysteria in the neighborhood.

Burning eyes, sore throats, allergies, and respiratory complaints were the most common symptoms of the claim form respondents. The Access database includes all four symptoms, the date the symptoms first became evident, and the last time the plaintiff experienced the symptoms. The dates were entered in the database just as they appeared on the claim form; each particular symptom appeared as a column head in the database so that it was possible for the

60

Royce A. Singleton, Jr. and Bruce C. Straits, Approaches to Social Research 3ed. (New York: Oxford University, 1999) 109.

researcher to enter "yes" or "no" to indicate whether the plaintiff suffered from the symptom or not. Additionally, the database includes a column for "Other Ailments."

Another question on the claim form asked whether or not any doctor had told any respondent that his/her symptoms were caused by the Sewerage and Water Board odors, emissions, or toxic substances. And, if so, a space was provided for the name of the doctor who had made this diagnosis. A review of the database confirms that the symptoms suffered were predominately common ailments present in most neighborhoods in southeast Louisiana. Only in very rare instances did any doctor indicate that the Sewerage and Water Board was the cause of the symptoms, and, this may have been a miscommunication between doctor and patient. All in all, the database supports the theory of hysteria in the neighborhood.

The concept of greed was not as easily quantified as the concept of hysteria. The researcher can only point to behavior and conduct that was not suggestive of the lawyer- statesman tradition espoused by Kronman in the Lost Lawyer, a tradition characterized by prudence, common sense, political fraternity, character, and public-spiritedness. 62 The growing trend to practice law as big business rather than a profession has placed the legal profession in a slippery ethical quandary. Ethical dilemmas in modern law are often shocking to public sensibilities but they are rooted in an adversarial system that encourages lawyers to act in ways that are not always socially altruistic.

Since greed is defined as an excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions, it is much more difficult to operationally define the concept of greed because the indicators of greed are much more subjective. In this litigation, I used as indicators the basic honesty, trustworthiness, and professional conduct or lack thereof of the lawyers’ actions as they 61

Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, (New York: Warner Books, 1987).

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related to both plaintiffs and defendants. I identified acts of intimidation, ethical misconduct, and dishonesty disguised as client protection by plaintiff lawyers. I hypothesized that greed was the motivating force behind the lawyers’ acts of intimidation, lack of professionalism, aggressiveness, and deceptive overtures to their clients, the Sewerage and Water Board, the defense attorneys and their paralegals.

These working definitions for greed are situation specific. Since I had relatively little direct interaction with the plaintiff lawyers, they provided an unobtrusive data source for this research. The plaintiff lawyers were never directly questioned for this research nor were they aware that they were being observed for research purposes. Other indicators of lawyer greed in this litigation were the use or misuse of expert witnesses. Depositions, attorney correspondence, neighborhood meeting notes, and court testimony were all used to examine the concept of greed as it related to plaintiffs’ counsel.

The uses of multiple sources of evidence to support my hypothesis concerning plaintiff hysteria and lawyer greed is a major strength of this case study ensuring reliability and construct validity. Most importantly, the process of triangulation and the development of converging lines of inquiry lend credence to the findings and conclusions of this research.