THE SOVIETS DIDN'T LIKE TRIAL LAWYERS, EITHER

Ah, library book sales. Here's a gem of a passage from John N. Hazard, Communists and Their Law: A Search for the Common Core of the Legal Systems of the Marxian Socialist States (Chicago, 1969), from the chapter entitled "Torts within a Social Insurance Framework":

It is notoriously hard for an individual to prove negligence against a large enterprise, even when the judge is required, as he is in the Marxian legal systems, to be active in helping the parties present their claims. It can be presumed that the enterprise will have good counsel and, being master of its own house, can present all pertinent facts. Further, the obligation to prove innocence of fault can be expected to stimulate the safety engineers in an enterprise to devise appropriate measures of protection and to make sure that they are in accord with whatever standards may exist nationally and locally through published regulations and general practice. Finally, there is little reason to fear that placing the burden of proof on the defendant will multiply litigation brought by men skilled as plaintiff's attorneys and functioning on a contingent fee basis under which they are paid only if they win. These practices, found in some countries of the West, are absent in the USSR, where attorneys are under stricter discipline than abroad and where citizens are discouraged from harassing state enterprise without rather sure chance of winning. (390)

Stop making a fuss, little worker bees. You're just mucking up the capitalist communist system.