Life in litigious L.A., where lawyers never sleep.

Everyone enjoys a loony lawsuit story, especially in Los Angeles, where lawsuit abuse is blamed for everything from higher insurance rates to unemployment.

There's the delivery man who is suing his downtown L.A. machine shop employer, claiming that he developed hemorrhoids because the seat of his truck was too hot.

There's the L.A. woman who sued her doctors for frostbite after they advised her to apply ice to an injury incurred in a jet ski race.

Then there was the prison inmate who sued himself for violating his own civil liberties by getting arrested, then demanded the state pay the damages because he had no income.

In a bid to bring down the number of such embarrassing cases, a group has designated the week of Sept. 22 "Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week." Dreamed up by legal watchdog group Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA) and recognized by Gov. Pete Wilson, the week is intended to draw attention to the negative impact of "frivolous" lawsuits on the business environment of California - and especially Los Angeles.

"California lawyers spend more than $200 million a year in advertisements encouraging people to sue," said Sarah Cheaure, executive director of CALA. "We are taking this week to educate consumers on what lawsuit abuse is costing them, how to be smart legal consumers, and inform them of quicker, less costly means of solving disputes."

As an example, for every 100 reported car accidents in L.A. last year, 56 personal injury suits were filed - the highest ratio in the country, according to the Insurance Research Council.

In New York, where people aren't shy about lawsuits either, there were only 15 personal injury suits per 100 accidents.

According to CALA, wrongful termination lawsuits alone have reduced hiring levels in Los Angeles by 4 percent to 5 percent, and pushed up the region's cost of goods and services to the tune of $1,200 per citizen per year.

While many of these cases do not prevail in court, they are a financial drain on the state because they take up the time of court officials. CALA claims that every lawsuit filed costs taxpayers $500, and at least $8,000 more if it goes to a jury trial.

Then there are the legal fees incurred before anyone steps into a courtroom. The bulk of costs, as much as 90 percent, are accumulated during the "discovery" process when both sides are building their cases.

"Lawsuits are a weapon, and if they are used indiscriminately they can cause great harm. One suit can wipe out a small business," said CALA founder Bill Bloomfield.

Despite such horror stories, there are signs of improvement. Automobile-related personal injury filings in Los Angeles County have dropped from 41,000 in 1988 to around 11,000 in 1996. The decline has been attributed to better automobile and highway safety and growth of the alternative dispute-resolution industry.

Lawyers use such numbers when they counterattack CALA and other tort-reform groups, which they say are front organizations for big business in its campaign to rob injured consumers of the right to claim compensation.

"They like to create propaganda by feeding the press worst-case scenarios," said partner Bruce Broillet at Greene, Broillet, Taylor, Wheeler and Panish in Santa Monica.

He stressed that some lawsuits once condemned as "frivolous" have in fact made life safer for everyone.

"If Princes Diana had been driving in California she would not have died," said Broillet, pointing out that her car crashed into a freeway pillar that under California law would have been protected by a concrete barrier.

"Those barriers, designed to put your car back onto the road, are there because of a so-called frivolous lawsuit," he said.

The legal community also argues that the courts are over-crowded due to an explosion in the number of corporate, rather that private, cases.

Bruce Brufavich of Agnew and Brufavich in Torrance, a former president of the Consumer Lawyers Association of California, stressed that most consumer lawyers work on a contingency basis, meaning they only get paid if they win in court or get a cash settlement. As a result, they will only take cases they have a reasonable chance of winning.

"If a lawyer is working on contingency he can't run a business by chasing cases that are not going anywhere," Brufavich said.

Corporate lawyers, on the other hand, are usually paid by the hour, and as a result will tackle any case they are hired to pursue, no matter how frivolous, he said.

"If corporate lawyers worked on contingency you would see a dramatic drop in their business," he added.

CALA counters that private lawyers and their clients file unjust lawsuits against businesses simply because the firms are most likely to settle out of court rather than face an expensive court battle, even when they know they could win.

Pacific Research Institute, a "non-partisan" research group with a reputation for conservative sympathies, estimates that 98 percent of all lawsuits in California are settled out of court.

"Looking at only 2 percent of cases that reach a jury is like looking at only the visible tip of a large iceberg: It ignores the larger, unseen part below the water that may do more harm," said institute Vice President Steven Hayward in a report.