I ONCE LOCKED the keys in my car while visiting in a small New England town, hundreds of miles away from the spare set. So I did what Americans in small towns normally do in this situation - I called the cops and asked them if they'd come and pry it open with one of their jemmy sticks.
A friendly officer offered his sympathy but said he could not help me because the year before while giving a hand to another lady in the same boat, he had been accused of scratching the paint. She had sued, and the station ordered all officers never to provide such assistance again.
I remember wanting to track this woman down and wring her neck, no matter how much it cost me.
There are few corners of American life that escape the influence of litigiousness gone mad and that includes the recent scandals on Wall Street.
Much of the disingenuous book-keeping practices that have emerged since Enron's collapse last December would have been harder to justify under the London-based International Accounting Standards (IAS).
The United States' set of standards, the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), has been described as a rules-based system while its philosophical rival, the IAS, is principles based.