Yes. Then I would counter-sue and they'd probably be worse off than before.


Lawsuits are annoying, but they are a fact of life. Complaining about them will solve nothing.

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

"One small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind".

If an astronaut doesn't need good grammar, niether does you.

Host of Seraphim

Okay, firstly: a company may make millions, but that doesn't mean they can afford to lose millions. And even if they can, it doesn't mean they want to. Usually when they lose millions to a suit like this, they make it up by raising prices for the rest of us consumers.

Second: frivolous lawsuits are the reason why it can take up to three+ years to get your case heard. That includes stuff like suing the uninsured motorist who hit you and broke your spine, resulting in the hundreds of thousands of dollars you had to pay out of your own money to live long enough to get into the wheelchair you now call home. That's three years for you to go completely broke and no longer be able to afford medical treatment, waiting in line on a court dockett while some woman with a jaw condition sues the company who makes the candy she happened to be chewing when her jaw finally gave out.

These lawsuits are VERY detremental to the american legal system. THATS why people get upset with them.



And as for your "the people who are getting sued are usually rich a-holes", what about the drycleaner in that whole pantsless-lawyer case? He doesn't seem expecially rich to me. Also, he was completely innocent. They settled for the few thousand in court costs; he has yet to get a dime towards the thousands of dollars he had to spend to deffend himself against the stupid lawyer.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Damn right... lets sue them 'cause they're rich and we don't like 'em. After all if they own large industries, they deserve to to get their money taken away from them!!!

Hmmmm... hang on a sec... most of us posting here are rich compaired to many in the thrid world... maybe we should rethink this a little...

Well, no. You see, in this country at least, we have this system wherein, if enough people complain, the stupid laws that permit multimillion-dollar candy-chewing incident lawsuits get changed, and maybe the price of said candy won't have to be increased to pay for morons with no sense of personal responsibility.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I think we've just determined the current whereabouts of Robin Hood...

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

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PW -- Plant Whisperer

You're all close to the way it's supposed to work.

Everyone should have access to the legal system - be able to file a lawsuit against anyone they feel has wronged them. Of course, that should only be after they have determined that it is the other person's fault, that they themselves did exercise an appropriate degree of responsibility, and that the only course left to redress the wrong is a lawsuit.

Lots of times this approach fails. When it does, we get a frivolous lawsuit.

However, keep in mind that there is still one more check in the system. The judge who is first presented the suit has an obligation to determine if it has merit. S/He can call a hearing to determine this if necessary. Only after the judge has decided the suit has merit and there is a credible chance the plantiff could win is the suit supposed to proceed.

If a suit that is truly frivolous makes its way to court, it's not the system that has failed, it's the people in the system... all and each of them.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Ahh, the goatee. All the disadvantages of facial hair, but you still get to shave every day. Plus, they're just so . . . uncommon.

I'm going to try to convince my wife to shave her legs, but only from the knees up.

Isn't "Loser pays all court costs" supposed to be a good way to curb frivolous court cases? I know I'd be far less likely to sue Craftsman Tools when I poke my eye out with one of their screwdrivers if I'll be stuck with their attorney's bills if I lose. I don't know if that would do it, but I see it offered as a solution, and sometimes it makes sense.

Not necessarily. There are plenty of lawsuits that are legitimate, but just need that trial case to work out the particulars. If a wronged person loses one of these, then I would feel doubly sorry for them.

I've always thought it should be a 3-way verdict. Liable, Not Liable, Frivolous. It's at the frivolous level that the loser would pay.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Not necessarily. There are plenty of lawsuits that are legitimate, but just need that trial case to work out the particulars. If a wronged person loses one of these, then I would feel doubly sorry for them.
There's that, and there's the (probably legitimate) fear that fear of losing suit would keep some that were legitimately wronged from filing suit. They're always going to err on the side of caution.

I agree with being able to penalize people for filing frivolous lawsuits, but the problem is, who's opinion do you go with when determining if a case falls under this definition or not? A jury? Well a lot of these completely stupid cases are awarded damages by the jury. Not to sound snobbish, but a jury is made up of random registered voters, who on average tend to be not so bright. (Hey, it's the same reason we have electoral college instead of at-large elections for president, so if I sound snobby so did our forefathers).

Judges could make the decision, but they can already do that (as we saw in Lawyer M. Pantless v. Common Sense). They tend not to throw these cases out though, because it's safer to be conservative than to potentially throw out a valid case. And lets face it, some just want the publicity.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Yes; the other part of the issue that I've heard.
Well; I think the really stupid decisions will still make it through, but what the real issue is the volume of these cases. The majority of them is correctly decided, but only after the time and money is wasted. This majority is where the issue is. I know of a sports equipment manufacturer that went belly-up from the time and money being spent fighting lawsuits, but it had never lost a case.

In some cases, the plaintif just presents enough of a preview to make the judge decide that further details need to come out in a trial.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Yeah, I had a debate paper on this my freshman year at Ohio Uni. The shear volume of cases is the biggest problem, followed by rediculous damages. You wouldn't believe the cases I found; from prisoners sueing because the toilet seats had that padding on them (the kind that's suppose to make it more comfortable), to parents sueing because their kid with a .012 batting average didn't make the school baseball team (and then a few towns over, parents suing because the coach let everyone play regardless of skill and the team didn't make it to the playoffs). This volume of stupid cases makes it really hard for someone with a valid case to get through the system in a timely manner.

I don't know about that. It seems that way, I agree. But rules of trial state that both sides must be made aware of the evidence to be presented ahead of time (i.e., no suprise witnesses, evidence, etc. that's only allowed on tv*), and I'd imagine that the judge gets access to that information aswell.

*there are a few exceptions to that rule, for instance if it wasn't possible to know ahead of time that the evidence would be available.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Hence my amusement at the new $10 bill, featuring a picture of Alexander Hamilton and the statement "We the People." Hamilton would be so annoyed!

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Yeah... he would have hated the direction the country has gone... he was not one for the rights of the common man...

I was approached at the ferry terminal a couple of days ago by a fellow gathering signatures for a "citizens intitiative" to ban frivolous lawsuits. Only two problems:
1. The "citizens" initiative was written by, and the campaign for funded entirely by, the insurance industry. That includes paying the guy gathering the signatures.
2. Their definition of frivolous lawsuits is pretty well all of them.

I suspect the number of truly frivolous suits is relatively small. The real reason for the initiative is to keep people with real claims from collecting. I'm not saying there aren't frivolous suits (e.g. the pantless judge) but I think common sense rules more often than not in those cases.

It's really annoying to be stuck between the greedy lawyers and the greedy insurance companies.

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

Yeah... that's the difficult with attempting to trim "frivolous lawsuits" which ones fit the definition and which ones don't. A few silly lawsuits make for good news stories, but if you attempt to eliminate them, how many legitimate ones end up getting barred. I still tend to trust that common sense will rise above the absurd...