This is the common term for the plaintiffs' lawyers who will do anything (and I mean anything) to get some poor bastard or bastardess in front of a jury. The term comes from the unscrupulous behavior of these lawyers after an auto accident, train wreck, plane crash -- you name it. If someone's been hurt, it was someone else's fault, and, by God, they'll have to pay for it!
I don't know about where you live, but I had a car wreck where a stupid woman hit me from behind. It did quite a bit of damage and there were possible injuries. The next week, I got letters in the mail from over a dozen law firms. They had just happened to "hear about" my wreck and wondered if I might be injured?
These lowlife bastards have made an art form out of picking the stupidest jury imaginable, then playing them like a fiddle. They typically take up to half of the settlement to line their own pockets. You see their smiling faces on the back cover of phone books all across America. They are devils, and they are also the largest single contributors to the reelection efforts of Democrats in America.
It's the concept of punitive damages that has made them filthy rich, and that same concept threatens the integrity of the entire judicial system in America. I fail to understand how a country such as Great Britain, which tends to be far more left-leaning than the US, has had the good sense to keep punitive damages out of their court systems while we can't understand the damage they do to us all. By that, I mean when McDonald's is forced to pay some stupid bitch several million dollars because she spilled coffee on herself, who do you think really pays that? You and I do.
Jackie on Seinfeld was one of the most accurate sitcom portrayals of an ambulance chaser. "Who told you to put salve on that? Did I say anything 'bout salve? Where'd you get that salve, anyway?"