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Pretty much everything I've ever seen from "reason.com" is material promoting a libertarian viewpoint. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's pretty much just politics.
Does Europe have punitive damages? Who gets them? The US does and they go to the winning plaintiff, which is sort of odd. After all, if someone is fined for assulting me, I don't get that money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to TFA that's not how it works in Europe: if you deliberately run up costs, the court will not assign them to the loser. Only reasonable fees are passed on to the loser. And the loser can challenge.
A big corporation can run up an awful lot of perfectly legitimate legal fees. And the challenge remedy is not going to be much comfort to an indigent plaintiff as it's unlikely his lawyer is going to take that challenge on contingency.
Indeed, it's about as likely as getting Germany's system of universal health care here. It just reinforces the fact that conservatives favor draconian government regulations when they benefit corporate interests but argue against those that benefit the public at large.
Pretty much everything I've ever seen from "reason.com" is material promoting a libertarian viewpoint. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's pretty much just politics.
"Loser pays" doesn't seem consistent with libertarian philosophy, in that it advocates government interference in what should be a private economic matter: how one pays for one's legal representation. It is consistent with corporatism, however, which I suspect is closer to Reason's true philosophy.
It's a bit counter-intuitive, until you consider that there is no freedom if the rich man makes the rules.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't guilty corporate clients already spend heavily to defend themselves necessitating a concomitant response by the righteous(?) plaintiff who can't afford it? At least with loser pays, the plaintiff has the option of finding a lawyer who will accept the case contingent on recouping his presumably huge legal fees.
That's why there are lawyers who take cases on contingency. And while some of them are quick-buck artists just looking for a quick settlement, most are looking for real cases with a high likelihood of success, with plaintiffs who simply couldn't afford to bring their solid case otherwise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A big corporation can run up an awful lot of perfectly legitimate legal fees. And the challenge remedy is not going to be much comfort to an indigent plaintiff as it's unlikely his lawyer is going to take that challenge on contingency.
At least in Germany, what is a reasonable fee is strictly regulated and tied to the total value disputed. At the very least, you'll know the cost (roughly) at the outset of the case. Good luck trying that kind of regulation in the US.
"The practical case for loser-pays is equally compelling. Litigants naturally think too well of their cases; loser-pays pushes them to size up their prospects more realistically. It also curbs the brand of extortion, so routine in American law as almost to have lost its ethical taint, by which lawyers use the costs of the process itself, or the risk of a fluke outcome found in any trial, to strong-arm their opponents…
While 'loser pays' might benefit your particular case, it's easy to imagine an equal number of scenarios where a guilty corporate defendant uses the threat of running up huge legal fees to discourage valid lawsuits against it. The result is a windfall for corporations with no net improvement in actual justice. To put it another way, it decreases the likelihood of frivolous plaintiffs but increases the likelihood of f…
An acceptable trade-off in my view. The defendant is by definition not the one starting the court case so its more difficult to abuse. e.g. I can go onto the street & hit 10 guys with a baseball bat. Compare that with waiting on the street to get punched in the face (unlikely to happen) & then hitting them back with a baseball bat. Both involve the possibility of someone getting hit with a baseball bat but the one is less likely to happen & more difficult to abuse.