A better solution to tort reform.

[Silverhair]

I have read that the USA is the ONLY country in the world in which each side of a suit pays their own legal costs. We are also the most litigious country in the world - by far. We have more lawyers per capita than any country in the world. We have something that no other country in the world has - lawyers that sue on contingency - for 1/3+ of the win, nothing if they lose. And the frivolous lawsuits are slowing the economy. I feel insulted by many of the stupid warning signs that everything seems to have on them.

The legal system is supposed to be about justice, not a lottery.

The rest of the world uses the system of the loser paying the legal costs for both sides at a reasonable rate decided by the court. If you hired a super lawyer and the court cost fee isn't enough then you do make that difference up. The fees are assigned according to the percentage of the case that you win.

So you sue me for one million. (Have fun. I don't have it.) but you only win 50,000. Then you have lost 95% of you suit and have to pay 95% of my legal bill and I pay 5% of yours. This strongly discourages the silly lawsuits and also encourages suing for a realistic amount. Suits for realistic amounts rarely go to court as they are usually quickly settled.

A suit for a realistic amount, as the two parties define realistic, results in justice. Of course, if the two parties can't agree on an amount, then they can go to court. Even then, the plaintiff has strong reasons not to go crazy on the amount they try to get.

This has another huge advantage that is in the interest of justice. If you are innocent, and can prove it, and are still sued, it is NOT justice for you to have to pay expensive legal costs when you did nothing wrong.

The poor are help by this too, as if their complaint is valid, they incur NO legal costs. But if they are just trying to game the system, then no lawyer will touch the case.

This works in the rest of the world, and is much fairer than caps on awards.

Once again, THE PURPOSE OF THE COURTS IS JUSTICE - NOT A LOTTERY!

[LSdemocrat]

1. A few problems: not all cases are clear cut

You assume that all cases are clear cut: either it's a valid claim, or frivolous, when in fact often times there are cases where reasonable people can disagree about the proper outcome. It is precisely these type of cases that will be discouraged if such a system as the one you described is put into place.

Second, cases aren't settled based on how much a plaintiff is asking for, more often than not defendants settle the ones where they are obviously at fault.

Third, plaintiffs don't just pick a number out of the air to sue for. There are only a few abstract guidelines for what juries can award in damages. Damage awards are HIGHLY variable and unpredictable depending on what a given jury thinks is reasonable.

[Silverhair]

3. It takes more than a few paragraphs to fully describe it.

It works for the rest of the world.

Of course, no system is perfect.

[AP]

5. The UK is having headaches trying to REFORM loser pays. It's a very

troublesome way to allocate the costs of litigation and I predict that they'll limit loser pays dramatically eventually. The problem they have is that it's so time consuming and expensive to determine the difference between a win and a loss (and to have to do it at every motion makes it even worse).

[Silverhair]

7. Interesting. I wasn't aware of that fact. Thank You. NT

[LiberalAndProud]

2. I would support caps of legal redress if

insurance companies, hospitals, clinics, pharmaceutacal companies and doctors will agree to cap annual incomes.

Tort reform will save about 1.5% annually. Pennies on the dollar, and will make little to no impact on the cost of health care.

[Silverhair]

6. It involves more than medical malpractice.

Every industry has to guard against silly lawsuits. I had a lawyer friend who was a personal injury atty, and a good one. He told me of a case where a guy bought an antique Ford tractor. A gas line broke, causing the tractor to catch fire and injured the guy. He sued Ford for defective design. It is a problem throughout all of our economy, and has hidden costs as well.

Some companies have refused to bring out improvements in their product for fear that the improvement will be used to prove that the first product was defective, when in fact it was done with the best engineering available at the time.

[AP]

4. Loser pays is a bad idea. The trouble with it is that often it's not clear

who lost.

Law suits have many parts and many different motions and multiple issues that need to be resolved. Often loser pays means that you require even more time (tying up the courts and raising costs) just to determine who won and how to allocate costs when a jugdmet is partly a winner and partly a loser for a party.

Being responsible for your own legal costs is often cheaper for everyone involved.

Anyway, I think the US generally allows a party to make a motion for costs in extreme circumstances and they're awarded at the court's discretion. I think that's just fine. There are enough protections for innocent defendants that it's not often the case that you'd go all the way through a trial to final judgement unless there were some issues that weren't clear -- so there just aren't that many loser who rack up lots of lawyers fees who didn't have some good reason to be answering questions in a court of law.

And I really don't like your 95-5 math. A case where the plaintiff asks for 1 mil and gets 50k is not more difficult for the defendant than a case where the plaintiff asks for 50k and gets 50k. It seems silly to punish a winner just because she misestimated the value of her damages.

Cotingency fees are also often the only way a poor person is going to get a really solid effort by highly-competent lawyers. Jurisdictions that don't have it are leaning towards doing it because they realize that it really helpful for very poor claimants with very good cases. Another thing to remember about contingency fees: there's no tax on jury awards in the US. So, if you win 1 mil and your lawyer gets 300K, you're still left with more money than you'd have if that were 1 mil in earned income (and your lawyer has to pay tax on her 300K, so the taxpayer ultimately gets a tiny piece of that award in the form of income tax on the lawyer's income).

I think the solution to frivolous law suits is to punish the lawyers who bring them. Individuals have no idea whether their claims have merit. They trust the opinion of the professional -- the lawyer. If a lawyer is constantly having cases thrown out on summary judgment, then take away the lawyer's right to bring that kind of case. Don't make the plaintiff have to cover the defendant's costs, and don't forbid contingency fee arrangements that would mean good lawyers would only work for giant, rich corporations.