Admonishing a Drunken Man: Class Action Reform

• Author: Gary D. Ansel
• Published date: 01 March 2003
• Date: 01 March 2003
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0003603X0304800209
• Subject Matter: Symposium: Antitrust Class Action—Problems and Prospects

The Antitrust Bulletin/Summer 2003

Admonishing adrunken man:

class action reform

BY GARY D. ANSEL*

I.

Introductory apology

451

Henry

Fielding

wrote

about

excess

in

his

novel, Tom Jones, 1

sometimes

with

a

critical

eye

and,

at

other

times,

with

some

sympathy, understanding

and

humor.

Probably

one

of

the best

examples of Fielding's benevolence, his warm embrace of human

foibles, is evidenced in a passage early on in the work, where an

intoxicated Tom Jones seeks comfort in the arms of a woman whom

Fielding describes as not "richly and elegantly attired" but rather

...

without a Gown, in a Shift that was somewhat of the coarsest, and

none of the cleanest, bedewed likewise with some odiferous Effluvia,

the Produce of the

Day's

Labour, with a Pitchfork in her Hand

....

2

Fielding apologizes for Tom's indiscretion by explaining that Tom

was drunk:

He was, indeed, in a Condition, in which

if

Reason had interposed,

though only to advise, she may have received the Answer which one

Cleostratus gave many Years ago to a silly Fellow, who asked him, if

he was not ashamed to be drunk?

'Are

not you,' said Cleostratus,

'ashamed to admonish adrunken Man?'?

*Commercial Litigation Department at Snell &Wilmer, Phoenix,

Arizona.

HENRy

FaDING,

TOM

JONES (Sheridan Baker ed., Norton 1973)(1749).

2[d. at 195.

[d. at 196 (footnote omitted).

©2003 by Federal Legal Publications. Inc.