Thanks for the clarification, Constantine. And yes, I understand that hypotheticals can be quite maddening and sometimes downright irrelevant. I do, however, wish they would add to the short list of exceptions — not finding another witness or some angle no one thought of before — but simple incontrovertible proof that the judgment was wrong. Similar to the way DNA evidence can prove the innocence of a convicted man in a criminal case.
But what would be the cause of action? The plaintiffs did not commit any tort against the defendants. The plaintiffs are not at fault for the defendant’s inability to provide evidence to defend itself in the suit. Unjust enrichment was suggested, but that’s a principle of contract law and wouldn’t apply here.
Experience has shown that in civil cases finality is more important than right answers. The regret matrix is very different from criminal cases. For instance, the plaintiff must only prove a case by a preponderance of the evidence. That basically means the jurors can be about 49% percent sure that the plaintiff is not entitled to any relief, but they stiill must find for the plaintiff.
And **constantine **is right. There are litigants who abuse the provisions that are already in place either by making one argument, losing, and then making a totally contradictory argument. Or by trying to reargue the same points over and over despite adverse rulings (I’m not talking about taking an appeal to a higher court here, but separate lawsuits and 60(b) motions). It is these folks for whom the screws have been tightened so.
But more practically, if judgments were not final, one would have difficulty collecting them, let alone spending the proceeds. If I got a $100,000 judgment against a pharmaceutical company. I would still have the task of collecting it before me.
If the pharmaceutical company could claim, on appeal, or in a separate lawsuit, or in a motion, that the judgment was incorrect, then they could probably simply make those claims in response to my collection efforts. That’s what we call a collateral attack. By and large, they are not permitted because otherwise our court system would not make any progress. So once I have a judgment, it is a judgment, and I get to enforce it against the judgment debtor’s assets. If I couldn’t do that, the judgment would be worthless, and I would be likely to take the law into my own hands.
Similarly, the hypothetical judgment that I just mentioned would probably mostly pay for actual expenses (medical expenses, for example) and attorneys’ fees. And the rest of it is mine. I can spend it. It creates what they call a wealth effect–I might want to spend it on something I could, or would, not buy if I did not have the judment money. But if I might have to pay the money back after some unlimited amount of time, I couldn’t use the money to pay anyone or buy anything. I would have to invest it as a reasonably prudent investor would, even though I still owed the medical bills and my lawyer. And that’s no fun. So in the realm of civil judgments, finality is kind of important.
And the concern about judicial resources is not so much to protect judges and clerks as it is to protect litigants. This works in two ways. First, litigation costs money. If I can lose a case, and then file new lawsuits to reargue the case, my opponent will have to pay a lawyer to defend against my efforts. Our system infrequently permits my opponent to recover those costs. Not to mention the fact that getting a judgment for costs, is not the same as getting one’s costs paid. The judgment for costs, will cost additional money to get. And then my opponent would have to try to collect it; if I am broke, I am able to run my opponent’s meter at no expense to myself. Second, and this bears emphasis: Other people need to use the court system too. While I am taking my second, and third, and fifteenth swing at the apple, there are others waiting in line behind me for their first. Some of those people really need the money they are suing for, but they have to wait for a judge to be available. So at some point, we have to limit the number of turns people get to take. We’ve decided to limit the number to one.
In other kinds of cases, the rules are differenb because the costs and the regret matrix is different. For one thing, in criminal cases, our regret matrix is heavily biased against wrongful conviction. And if an innocent person is incarcerated, finality does not really come into play. The only real value that argues in favor of limited appeals is the burden placed on the system by repetetive litigation. So eventually, the litigation must stop.
Thanks to everyone for the input. Very enlightening.