Item — HN Reader

I think part of this talk is directed at the messed-up American legal system which has trickled down to affect a lot of life in America. You can't make an exception for fear of a lawsuit. The rest of the world doesn't have a culture of lawsuits, and as a result, wise exceptions flourish.

If we remove lawsuits with large monetary penalties, leaving small penalties and, of course, criminal penalties, frivolous lawsuits will die on the vine.

Does anyone know of a movement to make this change? And if it doesn't exist yet, who's with me to start one?

1 comments

"Loser pays" might produce the results you want:

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/12/10/marie-gryphon-on-l...

That's a good idea but it could have the consequences that a poor person would have to front money to go to trial, just in case he or she lost.

I think getting rid of the large settlements (replaced with criminal charges) is the way other countries have it. Again, I'd be interested to see if work can be done towards this.

> That's a good idea but it could have the consequences that a poor person would have to front money to go to trial, just in case he or she lost.

Not necessarily. Some "loser pays" systems allow the plaintiff's lawyers (or an insurance company) to take the risk of paying the defendant's costs if the lawsuit is unsuccessful. (The key is that those systems allow such folks to get paid for taking that risk.)

In the US, when a contingency lawyer loses a case, s\he is typically out his time and occasionally expenses as well. Loser-pays "just" doubles the hit from a loss.

I'm not saying that loser-pays is a good idea, I'm just saying that it doesn't necessarily exclude poor folks.