The litigious society

The apple didn't fall too far from the tree

Assuming the case isn't dismissed by the judge for failure to state a cause of action, it's the jury, composed of tax-paying citizens of Tarrant County, that decide what, if anything, the plaintiffs recover. Anybody can sue anyone for anything. The only thing that's a guarantee is that the press will report the most outrageous examples as if recovery is a given.

Got one just as good. I don't have a link as this occurred about 15 years ago. I was a law clerk when it came up for trial down in Louisiana.

A guy got pulled over. One of the officers thought the guy had been drinking but admitted he wasn't sure. They do standard field sobriety tests and the guys passes with no problems. They write him a speeding ticket and let him go.

About 30 minutes later, report of a robbery in the area. Another unit spots suspect and a chase ensues. A pedestrian gets hit and I know he lost his leg (I don't remember if he died .. the photos of the leg are what I really remember). Suspect turns out to be the same guy police had pulled over earlier. Blood alcohol tests show he's a .14.

Pedestrian sues police with two theories: 1) cops should never have let him go after the first stop and 2) they should not have been chasing him after the robbery! I feel sorry for the pedestrian, but come on.

FYI. I don't know the outcome. Trial got continued and was not refixed until after my 1 year term was up.

The problem is also that, no how stupid the lawsuit and no matter the outcome in court, the sued party has to somehow get counsel and otherwise spend a great deal of time and effort in efforts to fight the lawsuit. This is aside from stress of being sued, and it is always stressful.
My personal favorite is when the families of the two 1997 North Hollywood bank robbers (the ones who tried to re-enact the gunfight from Heat with automatic weapons and heavy-duty body armor) sued the LAPD for being too slow to give first aid to the gunmen after they had finally been subdued. The fact that the two had done there darnedest to kill as many cops as possible seems to have not crossed the families' mind.

Here's an idea: could the city sue in response along the lines of if the family hadn't ignored their son's obvious emotional problems, they would have been spared the expense of a swat team?

Yeah, it's odious, but in this case it would be a proportional response.

William: loser pays! An excellent remedy, especially that you specified that the attorney is the one who pays. It would, however, have to include some sort of balance: too many who really do need to sue will be refused because they don't have a better than wanted chance of winning.

Iraneus, I am trying hard to avoid making assumptions about your attitude towards juries. Allow me to offer my pesonal experience.

I've been in jury selection over a dozen times, sat on four juries and rendered three verdicts. One of the latter was a criminal trial, all the rest civil. Every jury consisted of a broad selection from the local population. Pick a combination of attributes (be reasonable, please), and I've likely worked with that person in the jury room.

It is true, people who shouldn't can end up on a jury. Judging solely from my personal, local experience, all of the trial personnel from judge to bailiff worked hard to minimize such a person's effect on the outcome. I don't know of a more intense commitment to civic service, consistent and ubiquitous. I can't think of one, off hand, as intense.

A few years ago, I was on a jury in a civil suit. A public employee started a fight with his supervisor. The public employee landed several punches. The supervisor did not fight back. Both men were penalized, but neither were fired. Both sued, but the supervisor quickly dropped his lawsuit. The employee who had actually started the fight and landed the blows refused to drop his suit.

The jury I was on had one juror who believed, because she didn't like the defendant's face, and didn't think he would be pleasant to work for, that we should find in favor of the plaintiff.

I felt that this would send a message to the plaintiff that it was OK to solve his problems at work by beating up his supervisor.

At the time, I was working for a liberal organization, and another person on the jury worked for a rival, conservative organization. Together we convinced this juror to change her vote in favor of common sense and we decided that the plaintiff's case was without merit. Proof that liberals and conservatives can work together.

Iraneus, thanks for the response. I would just add one comment: defense attorneys will spend hours (and money on consultants) coaching their clients on appearance and demeanor while in court. It really is a two-way thing. This might be apocryhal, but a public defender was once overheard to say: would you want a defense lawyer looking like that, trying to keep you out of the gas chamber?

William, the problem with "loser pays" or the elimination of contingency fees is that it closes the courtroom to poor plaintiffs in civil cases. (Criminal defendants in jeopardy of life or liberty are provided council if they can't afford one.) Perhaps the poor don't have anything to complain about, but I doubt if anyone wants to go there. Perhaps we should have a sort of legal ER where the poor civil plaintiff can get the equivalent of the criminal public defender, but that will raise your taxes and quickly become the butt of political ire when the publically financed attorney wins a big judgment for his client against the city or large, private employer.

Bottom line: if you do away with contingency fees, you've got to replace it with another system that provides access to the judicial system or give up the notion that justice is blind to poor plaintiffs.

How about we just agree that if plaintiff suffered the alleged tort during the commission of a felony, plaintiff and plaintiff's heirs forfeit any right to sue for monetary damages? Plaintiff reserves all rights to any remedies they may enjoy under the criminal code.

It disgusts me that the legal system has become a lottery in which you try to cash in when you are "wronged", and that is it not only acceptable, but encouraged! Lawyers have a high incidence of alcoholism, divorce and other disfunction, and it is no wonder. I would be a mess too if my career was prostituting myself for money. What happened to honor and principle? I can't even begin to address the slime people who hire these lawyers.

Anyone with the filing fee can sue about anything. I don't think this lawsuit would last more than a nanosecond.

The system may have problems, but I don't think it's that screwed up.

All this crap about this being an overly "litigious" society is propaganda put forth by the insurance and manufacturing industries. They play on the ignorance of the American public (who don't understand our adversarial system of justice) and pump up demagoguery about the latest seemingly outrageous lawsuit -- like the McDonald's coffee case -- to whip up envy and anger amongst the public. They do this to raise support for further limiting access to the courts and preventing people from being able to sue, through efforts like so-called "tort-reform".

The fact of the matter is that the courts are vigilant about throwing unworth cases out on summary judgment. If a lawsuit has no merit, it has little chance of surviving to trial in the first place.

As it stands now, the doors to the courthouse are already being barred to the middle class, and only those who can afford to plunk down upwards of $5000 - $10000 can as a retainer can afford to sue. Think about it -- how many people who've just been unlawfully terminated can afford to pull five grand out of their pockets to sue? Not many.

Those who don't have those kinds of funds are relegated to the employment lawyers who are desperate enough to take these cases on contingency. And even if they do, the laws regarding wrongful termination are so tilted against the plaintiffs already, that unless they've got some tangible evidence of their employer calling them n*gger or uttering some other racial or sexual slur, they haven't got a prayer.

And yet the impression persists that people can bring a successful suit merely because their employer is an *sshole. As I tell people nearly every week, being an @sshole is not illegal. If it were, you and I would be behind bars already.

Sigliaris, I don't think the reason people are talking about revamping the system is just because this happened. It's just another talking point punctuating the ongoing discussion - I've been hearing off and on about tort reform for, oh, about a decade, in various magazine or internet fora.

fbc, I think the litigiousness of American society _is_ a problem. The adversarial system isn't working if frivolous lawsuits get heard, but serious ones have trouble getting into court.

It's affecting society indirectly, too. It's getting difficult to get doctors to be obstetricians - the malpractice insurance is insane, even though babies are surviving pregnancy who wouldn't have years ago. In other words, doctors are getting better at having babies survive through birth, but are being sued more (sorry, I don't have a specific article to point at, but have read articles with the insurance company premium stats, and the doctors per 1000 persons, etc). I would not be surprised if this affects other areas of life - what about the businessman who closed his dry cleaning shop even though he won against the ex-judge's 54 million dollar lawsuit?

After all, the costs aren't just about a judgment, but the opportunity cost in time to work and lawyer's fees for the discovery, hearings, and even trial - even if the defendant wins. The easy entry to the court system wouldn't be a problem if there wasn't a sense of entitlement (in the obstetrics world, to a healthy newborn). There seems to be a desire to put doctors on a pedestal - that they _could_ make every outcome perfect, if they only tried, so bad things don't just happen because the world isn't perfect, but that the doctor had to be negligent. So a culture of entitlement, affecting enough people, plus easy enough lawsuits, and courts that will let a guy sue a dry cleaner for 54 million dollars over a pair of pants, rather than laugh it out of court, well, all together, there is something that needs fixing.

Just my 0.02

"And even if they do, the laws regarding wrongful termination are so tilted against the plaintiffs already, that unless they've got some tangible evidence of their employer calling them n*gger or uttering some other racial or sexual slur, they haven't got a prayer."

fbc--you've got a point here. I think harassment laws, for instance, could be broadened beyond mere gender discrimination. For instance, if a man is making sexual slurs or taunts at another man (where it isn't even a quid pro quo homosexual thing) they should probably have a cognizable tort action.

That said--there is always going to be a balance in the law between allowing for the greatest possible recovery for victims and ensuring that there is some sort of bright line rule which prohibits unworthy plaintiffs from recovering.

fbc is 100% right. The only thing wrong with the court system is the cost of entry, it's too high.

All these 'frivious' lawsuits are unimportant unless people are actually not having them dismissed. If someone wants to start fining people for clearly absurd lawsuits like this, be my guest.

But the actual problem with the system is that when people wrong you it's almost impossible to recover damages because the system requires such an absurdly high entrance fee. I would really like to see what someone suggested above, some sort of 'public defender' civil lawyer.

Of course, that would need something in place to keep from being abused, but I think fining people who insist on going forward with absurd lawsuits would help stop that. :)

I don't know whether Canada has "loser pays", but I do know that one of the main reasons there are fewer lawsuits and lower damage awards in Canada (whose legal system is in general identical to ours) is that medical costs are rarely an issue, since they are already presumed to be covered by the single payer system. In the US, it is prohibitively expensive to be injured, and one cannot blame victims for trying to hold those who cause the injuries responsible for the consequences of their actions. Actually, I thought that was a conservative value, but maybe that only works when we see the victim as "worthy" and when there is no risk that a damage award will move the said victim from a lower to a higher socioeconomic class.

"Lawyers have a high incidence of alcoholism, divorce and other disfunction, and it is no wonder. I would be a mess too if my career was prostituting myself for money. What happened to honor and principle? I can't even begin to address the slime people who hire these lawyers." Excuse me, Bob, did it cross your mind for so much as a split second that some of your fellow posters here might be lawyers?

Alcoholism is a major problem for trial lawyers, but not for the profession in general. Divorce rates among lawyers are pretty much the same as in the general population at the same educational level. Divorce LAWYERS, btw, tend to stay married forever (fwiw). And lawyers are the only remaining profession still required to do substantial pro bono work. Just try to get a pro bono job on your plumbing or your electrical wiring sometime. Far from "prostituting" ourselves for money, lawyers make less money on the average than members of any of the other "learned professions." We are also the last bastion of liberally educated professionalism, the last career in which one can actually get points for knowing things outside one's official specialty.

I realize that liberals and people perceived to be liberals are fair game for groundless and vicious insults on any blog with "conservative" in its title, and I come prepared for that. I did not expect to have to deal with anti-lawyer blather here. Can we have some civility, please?