Class action lawyers have brought many frivolous and ill-advised suits over the years, often described as such by the courts themselves.
Obviously, the legal industry has been negligent in not putting safeguards in place to prevent dangerous and foolish use of class-action lawsuits by its members.
The cost to society has been enormous in terms of the resulting crumble-headed and expensive efforts whose sole purpose is to prevent such suits. Not to mention the costs of the trials themselves. These costs are passed on to the public at large.
Class-action lawyers are themselves very wealthy, taking their commissions, as they do, on awards meant to reimburse entire demographic populations. 10% of 125 billion dollars, for example, is 12.5 billion dollars!
The course is clear: a Class Action lawsuit must be brought against class action lawyers. Justice must be served. Now who’s with me?
Y’know, all this would go over better if people had an inkling of an idea of what they’re talking about. You can’t just bring a class-action suit; you have to have it certified by the court as suitable for such a classification. Why? Precisely because a class-action suit is such a cash cow and potentially so prohibitively expensive to the company on the receiving end of the suit. There are no more frivilous class action suits filed than there are frivilous regular old, garden-variety suits and, lo, there are many of those.
So I think what you’re really searching for is simply a suit to prohibit lawyers from suing.
By “frivolous”, do you mean the judge throws it out of court without a trial, or do you mean it’s determined to be frivolous during the trial?
And are you saying that there are just as many frivolous class-action suits filed as frivolous non-class-action suits, despite the increased difficulty in getting class-action certification?
We need class action suits…and other suits as well. If the suit is groundless, the proper way to decide that is through the courts. Just because you don’t like a suit does not meen that the system is flawed.
There is one problem with the legal system though. IT is that it costs nothing to be a plaintiff, but costs a lot to be a defendant. In other words, Joe Homeless guy can sue me without putting any assets on the line. However, I have to have cash to defend myself against Joe’s suit.
I am a strong proponent of awarding legal fees to successful defendants. I would make plaintiff counsel AND the plaintiff responsible for these charges.
This isn’t strictly true. A defendant can defend him- or herself without having to spend any particular amount of money. Sure, you lose time from work, or you have to do the work yourself, and I’m not minimizing the financial impact of that. But the plaintiff has to do the same thing – hire a lawyer, or do the work himself. So the distinction isn’t that one party gets to do it for free, while the other has to pay, it’s that one party is appearing voluntarily – intentionally making that investment – while the other party is appearing essentially involuntarily and did not choose to lose the time or money he stands to lose defending himself.
For that reason, I also support the award of attorney fees; I think it cuts down on frivolous suits.
Well, I can go out now and get an attorney to take on my suit against the makers of fatty foods and he will take it on a contingency basis.
However, if you sue me for injuring your sensibilities on this board, I can’t get a defense on contingency; there is no award to take the fees from.
And I agree about awarding attorney’s fees. However, we have never gotten them back. They just waive the right to appeal in exchange for a full and final release.
Let’s not go nuts here. The ability of an attorney to take a case on commission is one of the few reasons less well-off (or even normal) people can afford them when challenging corporations. Suppose MegaCorp X™ injures me in some manner that is actionable (or whatever lawyers call it). All MegaCorp X™ has to do is threaten to defend against my suit in order to effectively nullify my chances of winning. There’s no way I can afford the endless rounds of appeals, motions and dirty tricks involved in a protracted civil case. That is, unless a lawyer takes the case on commission.
That does not make it innately more expensive for you to defend the case than it is for the plaintiff to prosecute it. A contingeny fee does not mean the plaintiff is not paying the lawyer; it means the award the plaintiff would otherwise get is reduced by the attorney’s fees. That is a “cost” chargeable to the plaintiff, as otherwise he would have received the entire award.
I’m sure you recognize that waiving your to attorney’s fees is a business decision made by your employer, and is totally unrelated to your legal right to collect them under the law. In other words, you’ve apparently never gottent them back because you’ve never tried to get them back.
the pltf slips and falls at Krogers (or on my sidewalk). Her meds are $10,000. Many attorneys would be willing to take this case and file suit. Now the clmt probably does not have to lay out any cash to get the suit started. But Krogers (or I) has to start spending money on defense fronm the beginning.
at trial, Kroger win’s and has legal bills of $12,000. THe attorney fees are owed by the plaintiff, not plaintiff counsel. Chancer are that the plaintiff does not have $10k.
Krogers choice is a) spend the next 10 years terying to recover the money or b) trade the award for a full and final release.
Sure, it is a business decision, but not a difficult one. The point is that without the award of attorney fees AND some enforcement method, there is no disincentive to file frivilous or questionable lawsuits. it is the downside of attorney’s taking suits on contingency.
That is not a difference in cost, as you must realize, but a difference in the time that the outlay is expected. In other words, the contingency lawyer is “loaning” the client the value of his or her services unless or until an award is won. What you said was that it is somehow intrinsically more expensive to mount a defense than a plaintiff’s case, and that’s just not correct. Both can be pursued by the individual with counsel, or the individual pro se and neither is inherently more expensive than the other.
This is a problem. But that doesn’t mean that Kroger is not entitled to get its fees if the losing party is able to pay them. Or the individual can have the judgment hanging around his neck for the rest of his life; legal judgments, including a judgment of fees, are not generally dischargeable in bankruptcy.
Yes, but your last post made it sound as if your company did not voluntarily give up its right to attempt to collect fees due to it, but that, instead, it somehow was denied those fees by the courts or by some other problem than that the opposing party just doesn’t have the money.
What enforcement method would you propose? The person either has the money or he hasn’t. A person entitled to fees can use every legal method to collect that debt, including filing a lien on property or garnishing wages, just like any other legitimate debt-holder. If the person doesn’t have the money, what else do you expect the system to do? Moreover, the prospect of an non-dischargeable debt may well act as a disincentive to many, as might the requirement that the plaintiff pay for filing and serving the complaint.
Surely you see that it has little to do with contingency fee arrangements; it’s only a downside if the contingent client loses his or her case; fees are awarded; but he or she can pay no part of them. In any event, it’s only a downside to defendants, not to everyone. Moreover, no lawyer, reputable or no, will take a case on contingency unless he or she thinks there is a good likelihood of recovery. No recovery and the lawyer eats all the costs.
well, I certainly see a lot of suits that are preposterous. Greed does funny things to an attorney (or anyone).
And you are right that the issue is mainly about the time of the cash outlay. But this is a huge problem if you need to defend yourself and don’t have the cash to lay out. If someone sues me personally and I don’t have $10k in cash, I am in deep trouble regardless of the merits of the case. That is what I am talking about. Total cost is not my issue.
As for enforcement of the payment of attorney fees, there is no good way to do it. Most companies and people are not in the business of collections, so the award is only as good as the person’s ability to pay. No suprise there.
I have seen plaintiff attorneys go under because they lost an expensive case.
and he will take it on a contingency basis.