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Originally Posted by Meiac09
explain, please  |
What makes it easy to sue someone in this country is these ambulance chaser lawyers who advertise that you don't have to pay them anything and that they will get paid only if you do. These lawyers do not have any intention of taking 99% of these cases to court. They know that the insurance companies will settle out of court because of the huge legal fees that would be involved in defending such a case -- it is less expensive to just settle these cases. If the law stated that the winner had to pay the loser's legal fees, then the insurance companies would not look to settle any case that did not have merrit, and these lawyers would be much more picky about which cases they would take on, since a losing case would mean they had to pay the insurance company's legal fees. The end result is that it would eliminate almost all the bogus cases.
Keep in mind this is NOT what is referred to as Tort Reform. Tort reform puts limits on how much a jury can award in such a case. I am definately not in favor of tort reform. While many of these cases are bogus, there are cases where people are seriously injured and a company or medical facility is 100% responsible, and it should be up to a jury how much money to award for each individual case. There should not be a "one size fits all" chart that determins how much money should be awarded to someone who is injured.
This sort of thing would also be good for corporate law. I am a small business owner, and a few years ago my company was sued by a large music corporation (one that all of you are familiar with) over something that was complete BS. While they were suing for over $100k, they offered to settle for less than $10k, and my lawyer advised me to settle even though he thought we were in the right, since it would cost much more than $10k to defend the case. I ended up being forced to pay them even though I did nothing wrong. If I knew that the winner would have to pay the loser's legal fees, you can bet that I would have taken this one to court.