Ralph Nader is irked that America has 63 museums honoring the field of medicine but none at all honoring the field of tort law. He particularly wants to celebrate lawsuits dealing with such things as exploding Pintos, flammable pajamas, and overly trot McDonald's coffee. So he plans to open a Museum of American Tort Law in Winsted, Conn. It would be something like the baseball hall of fame and Disney World--a tourist attraction for the whole family.

Nader wants to build a mock courtroom where famous tort cases would be re-enacted He expects that children will be eager to check out the litigation gift shop. They might plead with mom and dad for toy replicas of faulty products, tiny Pintos, perhaps, cans of beans containing dangerous little pieces of glass, or matches attached to miniature pajamas. Maybe the kids would collect figurines of the tort allstars, including Nader himself and all the trial lawyers who have bought major-league teams or large chunks of Montana with their share of the litigation bonanza. Famous plaintiffs could tee represented, too, including Stella Liebeck who put the container of piping-hot McDonald's coffee between her knees for a minute while in her car, a questionable but historic decision.

For some reason, a lot of people are making fun of Ralph's idea. But why? The litigation explosion has been a boon to us all, particularly those who happen to be trial lawyers. It's useful to recall that the baseball hall of fame was not built until baseball clearly emerged as the dominant national pastime. Now that litigation has achieved similar status in our time, a similar museum should follow.

One of the museum's dioramas could be a re-creation of the burned-out DuPont Plaza Hotel in Puerto Rico, torched by unhappy union members. Following the time-honored deep pockets strategy, lawyers for victims did not sue the perpetrators. They sued hundreds of companies that made various hotel items that burned on the scene, from wallpaper and bar stools to the flammable dice used in the hotel casino. (New flame-proof safety dice available in museum gift shop.)

Ah, contingency fees! Nader says he wants interactive exhibits. One could be based on the famous talking Lincoln at Disneyland, and might feature a life-size model of Houston lawyer George Fleming. In a suit over faulty plastic plumbing installed in millions of homes in the Sun Belt, Fleming won a settlement of $170 million in cash, plus reinstalled pipe valued at $180 million. From the total award, he demanded $108 million in cash, nearly two thirds of the cash portion of the settlement, for himself. (He's still in negotiation with his for mer clients.) The talking figure of Fleming might discuss with tourists why he is entitled to this money for his work and how that computes on an hourly basis.

Surely the exhibit devoted to emotional damages, a profitable frontier in tort law, would be very popular. A Minnesota bank teller, pressed by her employer to take a lie detector test when she was questioned about missing funds, sued for emotional damage and won $60,000. A pain-and-suffering display could show the devout Hindu plaintiff who mistakenly bit into a beef burrito at Taco Bell. He sued, claiming he had clearly ordered a bean burrito and suffered emotional damage because beef is forbidden in his religion.

One whole wing of the museum should be devoted to litigation over subway incidents. The New York subways are a prime target for tort lawyers, who usually win between $40 million and $50 million a year from the transit authority. One couple sued for $10 million for injuries received when they were hit by a train while having sex on the tracks. In another case, one homeless man on heroin and another who'd had a bottle of wine for breakfast loitered on the tracks and were burned by the third rail (that was good for $13 million, including $9,000 for loss of their income as squeegee men washing car windshields).

Other famous subway cases include a New York drunk who lost an arm when he fell in front of an oncoming train ($3.6 million, set aside by a 3-2 appeals court ruling), a fleeing mugger shot after trying to rob a 71-year-old man ($4.3 million to the mugger) and an Illinois woman whose late husband, an immigrant from Korea, climbed down on the tracks and urinated directly on the third rail, thus electrocuting himself ($1.5 million because there were no signs in Korean warning against such behavior). (Anti-urination subway warning signs in Korean also available at gift shop.)

Others may giggle over the Ralph museum, but you can look for me there on opening day.