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Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?

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Re: Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?

#81

Post by hackuser »

Afforess wrote: post #12

I think the concern with investing in lawsuits should be focused on secondary motives. Lawsuits with lots of investors will have attorneys with secondary motives, such as keeping the case active as long as possible to continue to attract more investors, rather than resolve it. Perpetual cases could bog down courts in never-ending lawsuits and countersuit challenges, a legal version of Mutually Assured Destruction. Do…

> I think the concern with investing in lawsuits should be focused on secondary motives.

Consider a community where many people are invested in one side of a lawsuit. That could put a lot of pressure on the judge and jury to produce the popularly desired outcome.

Re: Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?

#82

Post by hackuser »

mamon wrote: post #72
TomGullen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I set up "toms safety certification" in libertopia and a company that sells children's toys that cause children die from choking on small parts bribe me to let them pass and I accept, this is not corruption? Corruption by definition is not bribing government officials. Show me that definition? Corruption by definition is actually fraudulent activity by those in power, where government is one entity that has power.…

The difference is that if private institution that issues "toms safety certification" takes a bribe it is a very shortsighted strategy - such certificates will be very soon considered untrustworthy and general public will start to ignore them, therefore putting certificate institution out of business. Government-powered institutions can take bribes for years, or even decades without ever being punished for that, or b…

> The difference is that if private institution that issues "toms safety certification" takes a bribe it is a very shortsighted strategy ... Government-powered institutions can take bribes for years, or even decades without ever being punished for that, or being put out of business.

That's a theory, but the theory does not describe reality. Reality is that human beings defraud each other frequently, and in fact that is one of the main reasons we have governments, laws, and regulations. When you buy a house or obtain a loan or some software, or walk down the street, do you assume nobody would be doing anything corrupt or fraudulant, just trusting everyone? Of course not.

Anarchy leads to chaos and conflict. Caveat emptor.

EDIT: Major edit

Re: Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?

#83

Post by mamon »

hackuser wrote: post #82
mamon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that if private institution that issues "toms safety certification" takes a bribe it is a very shortsighted strategy - such certificates will be very soon considered untrustworthy and general public will start to ignore them, therefore putting certificate institution out of business. Government-powered institutions can take bribes for years, or even decades without ever being punished for that, or b…

> The difference is that if private institution that issues "toms safety certification" takes a bribe it is a very shortsighted strategy ... Government-powered institutions can take bribes for years, or even decades without ever being punished for that, or being put out of business. That's a theory, but the theory does not describe reality. Reality is that human beings defraud each other frequently, and in fact that…

Ok, I can see I need to clarify my point. I am not opposed to a government or laws or regulations as such. What I am opposed to are laws and regulations that give some officials power to make arbitrary decisions granting one individual or company permission to do something and declining similar permission to another individual or company. Such decision-making power is the root of corruption. Some regulations are inevitable, but we should try to keep their number at the minimum.

Re: Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?

#84

Post by msandford »

rayiner wrote: post #79
msandford wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plaintiffs and litigation funders have no interest in lengthening cases once they feel they have a high likelihood of winning. Until that point, lengthen away! Better to string it out and win than finish it up quick and lose.

> Better to string it out and win than finish it up quick and lose. In practice, it's the defense that will string out a case hoping that the plaintiff runs out of money before the case reaches judgment on the merits. Plaintiffs want to win quick, or at least lose quick before they invest too much in the case.

That's a strategy both sides choose to employ actually. Imagine BigCo suing LittleCo notionally for infringing one of its patents, but really it's to drain LittleCo's coffers so that LittleCo is out of business and can't compete with BigCo in market X any longer.

Re: Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?

#85

Post by hga »

Frondo wrote: post #76
hga wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not entirely certain why, but the logic you employ here strikes me as very similar to the justifications used to support the Citizens United ruling. I'm not certain why, either, seeing as how Citizens United was about core political speech, Federal government censorship of a video about a candidate for federal office, which if the First Amendment, specifically: Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom…

No freedom is or has ever been absolute, certainly not 1st amendment freedoms (e.g. fraud).

The only speech I'm talking about, the only speech which was the subject of Citizens United, is core political speech.

In that context, in the traditional US context, there's no "fraud", AKA criminal libel. Although I don't agree with the extremes of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which removed useful feedback in the system in the civil law arena, current case law makes protection of core political speech all but "absolute".

Re: Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?

#87

Post by hga »

jerf wrote: post #80
schoen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's akin to the originally Marxist notion of "heightening the contradictions". http://acceleratethecontradictions.blogspot.com/2010/04/acce... The theory is that some system is inherently bad or broken but people in general don't quite realize it, so if it gets worse it will be more obviously bad and then they'll then actually deal with it. Although sometimes this kind of behavior does happen (for example, someone c…

"it seems like a risky theory of social change." It implicitly and falsely assumes that everybody will agree on what the solution is. In the presence of differences brought on not merely by "false consciousness" but by legitimate differences in opinions and desires, it fails the basic Kantian imperative to not do something that breaks society if everybody does it, because it means that everybody who disagrees with so…

Truth is, almost everybody "knows" that deep down, everybody else is secretly really like them, and it's just a lack of knowledge or external influence that leads to apparently disagreements.

That's actually the liberal (in the US sense)/Left conceit, than man is very malleable, that simply by supplying the correct knowledge and/or external influence (AKA environment in the non-strictly biological sense) can be changed. In practice, at the extreme, those who refuse to be changed end up in a forced labor camp if they're lucky.

The position of the right was well expressed by one of my favorite history professors, who said to my and my fellow STEM students' great applause that "Original sin is an empirical observation."

As you say, "the evidence overwhelmingly contradicts this belief."

Re: Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?

#88

Post by jaredhansen »

branchless wrote: post #59
teachingaway wrote: post #33

Champerty! Champerty is the (largely defunct) rule against funding someone else's lawsuit. I always thought that was a funny word. Champerty. But TIL that it comes from the fact that in "England, litigants could hire ‘champions’ to represent them in ‘trial by battle.’ By the late 13th century, these strongmen were being compared to prostitutes, and their prevalence hastened the movement of dispute resolution to the c…

a taboo against usury - pity it didn't last...

What? Most states have usury laws right now [1], as do plenty of places outside the US.

[1] http://www.alqlist.com/interestratesummary.html

Re: Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?

#89

Post by petegrif »

msandford wrote: post #84
rayiner wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better to string it out and win than finish it up quick and lose. In practice, it's the defense that will string out a case hoping that the plaintiff runs out of money before the case reaches judgment on the merits. Plaintiffs want to win quick, or at least lose quick before they invest too much in the case.

That's a strategy both sides choose to employ actually. Imagine BigCo suing LittleCo notionally for infringing one of its patents, but really it's to drain LittleCo's coffers so that LittleCo is out of business and can't compete with BigCo in market X any longer.

But in this scenario BigCo isn't the one needing outside financing, is it?

Re: Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?

#90

Post by petegrif »

hackuser wrote: post #81
Afforess wrote: post #12

I think the concern with investing in lawsuits should be focused on secondary motives. Lawsuits with lots of investors will have attorneys with secondary motives, such as keeping the case active as long as possible to continue to attract more investors, rather than resolve it. Perpetual cases could bog down courts in never-ending lawsuits and countersuit challenges, a legal version of Mutually Assured Destruction. Do…

> I think the concern with investing in lawsuits should be focused on secondary motives. Consider a community where many people are invested in one side of a lawsuit. That could put a lot of pressure on the judge and jury to produce the popularly desired outcome.

Judges and juries are frequently under pressure. Popularly desired outcomes aren't unusual.
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