The ability of an individual to go to court to seek compensation from someone who has violated his or her legal rights is the ultimate justice. Our tort system has been developed over hundreds of years of English and then American common law. The courts are there to protect individual legal rights, and I'm glad of it.

I see my role as a guardian of the long tradition of the common law, which recognized that with individual freedom, comes personal responsibility and accountability for how we use that freedom. Often we read of large and seemingly unjustified jury awards. Often these awards are largely punitive damages, damages we rarely award in this state. Sometimes the newspapers don't tell us the full story about the catastrophic nature of the injuries we suffer because of the carelessness of others. Usually we never hear about the typical small awards that never rate a headline because they aren't news.

Although I am a former trial lawyer myself, I sometimes resist attempts to stretch the law to impose vicarious liability on the "deep pockets" that had little or nothing to do with causing the injury. For example I dissented in Schooley v. Finch's Deli, 134 Wn. 2d 468 (1998) where a store owner was held liable for selling beer to an adult, who then sold it to a juvenile, who then gave it to another juvenile, who was injured when she jumped into the shallow end of a swimming pool.

Check out my speech "A Conservative Viewpoint on the Judiciary, the Legislature, and Trial Lawyers" on my judicial website, justicesanders.com .