I’m mainly interested in US law, but other countries feel free to weigh in.
I’ve heard a couple of contradictory positions (including on this very board):
Which is it?
Here’s an example of the second position, from here
've seen the first position mentioned a few times on this board.
IANAAL (I am not an American lawyer) but I suspect the position is broadly similar all over.
In very broad terms, you can sue anyone for anything, but you won’t be successful unless you sue on some proper basis. I could take the appropriate court form, fill in all the formal parts correctly so that it would look OK to the court filing staff, and file it. The substantive claim could be against Joe Bloggs for wilfully and offensively having red hair.
I could then be said to have sued Joe Bloggs for having red hair.
Of course, it would ultimately go nowhere and (at least in my jurisdiction) I’d end up having to pay Joe’s legal bills for having the matter struck out.
There are however a few brakes on such silliness. In my jurisdiction, if a lawyer assisted such litigant professional sanctions would follow. I am required to sign off on claims to say that I believe my client has a reasonable cause of action, and my local Law Society would take action against me for Unprofessional Conduct if I sued poor old Joe Bloggs for being a carrot top.
If Fred Moggs the non-lawyer filed such a claim in person, they might well attract the attention of the court registrars, who in my jurisdiction might have Mr Moggs declared a “vexatious litigant” (particularly if he pulled such a stunt more than once). This would mean that Mr Moggs would be banned from filing any legal proceedings without a judge’s permission.
So the answer is broadly that you can theoretically sue anyone for anything, but it ain’t going to go anywhere unless you have something approaching a reasonable basis for your action, and if you are attempting to do anything silly, sanctions are likely to follow and you are likely to have considerable difficulty getting any professional help.
The quote which you say supports the “second position” I suspect doesn’t really support that. All they mean is that you wouldn’t be successful in suing spammers at present, not that you couldn’t try.
By and large, anyone in the U.S. can file a lawsuit against anyone else for any reason. (There are limited exceptions for incercerated prisoners and people the courts have found to be persistent vexatious ligitants.)
However, the federal courts and most U.S. state courts have rules under which a person who is sued can get monetary sanctions when they are sued in an action found to be “frivolous,” usually defined as having no basis in law or fact, or under no good-faith argument to extend, change or reverse law the law.
Actually now that I think about it, my Law Society would probably take action against me not merely for Unprofessional Conduct, but for Professional Misconduct (which is much worse) for lying to the court, because there is no way in hell I could say with a straight face that I actually believed my client had a good cause of action for suing Mr Bloggs for being a bluey, so I would in effect have knowingly lied to the court when I filed the claim.
Thanks for the informative and considered answers. I knew someone on here would be able to put it clearly.
I believe there are situations where a lawsuit would not be frivolous, yet you can’t sue. When entering into a contract, don’t clauses exist that prohibit one (or more) of the parties from suing the other?
I’ve got no cites, and IANAL, just hoping this will create some more informative posts.
Suing, as used in my legal circles, refers to the act of initiating litigation by filing a complaint or petition with a court or other judicial authority.
You can release your rights to make claims against people, but you can still sue on those released claims by filing a complaint with the court. The contractual release would be a defense to that suit, and would likely result in the suit being gutted in a hurry.
The court won’t know about your release (or the validity thereof until it is raised as a defense), so the court is in no position to launch a preemptive strike against your complaint on its own initiative.
So, even if you’ve released claims, you can still sue (and lose).
Innominate tort.
What about situations where there is a legal prohibition on suing such as HMO’s being protected from litigation?
Whack-a-Mole, I don’t know what an HMO is, but the general answer above is pretty much always going to hold good, at least in any jurisdiction I’m aware of. The basic fact is, at most the court filing staff look at the basic format of your writ (or whatever they call it in your jurisdiction) and pretty much if the front page has all the right words, and the last page has all the right signatures etc and if you pay the right fee, they’ll file it. They are not qualified or paid to scrutinize claims to consider whether what is in the middle is crappy cause of action, or breaches a prohibition on suing some particular person in particular circumstances. As long as the substance of your claim looks vaguely like english words and sentences, the filing clerks won’t raise an eyebrow. And indeed I’ve seen handwritten claims written in pencil filed by complete loonies that barely even meet that standard.
The onus is then on the defendant to raise defences and prohibitions or to apply to strike etc.
FYI an HMO stands for Health Maintenance Organization. It’s a type of health insurance plan in the US that was meant to keep healthcare costs down…very common in the US. A side effect is that the HMO can tell the doctor if they don’t think a particular test is warranted. If you die as a result of that decision you (or rather your family) cannot sue the HMO. They are protected from this by statute.
Princhester’s answer still stands – when we say “you can’t sue an HMO” we really mean “you can file suit to your heart’s content, but it will be declared frivolous at the first opportunity and dismissed, you’ll have to pay the other side’s legal costs, and if you try to do it more than a few times the judge will instruct the clerk to not accept further suits from you on any subject unless you can show cause why they’re non-frivolous.”
–Cliffy
How dare you start this thread. I’ll see you in court!
if you are truly interested in learning more, i would suggest this cite as a great resource for material. A friendly warning though, if you have high blood pressure you may not want to read about some of these lawyers and plantiffs in some of these cases.
(U.S.) Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) provides a nice setting to discuss the interplay of the two rules discussed above. FRCP 12(b)(6) allows a litigant to file a motion to dismiss the suit for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.
So, to use the first replyer’s example, you are totally able to file a lawsuit against Joe seeking damages for the emotional pain and suffering you’ve experienced because of Joe’s willful and wanton sporting of red hair, but Joe will be able to get the case dismissed because you have not stated a claim upon which the court can grant relief.
What this all comes down to is the phrase “you can sue anyone for anything” is not really a responsive reply to any question. People often say it on this board when someone asks if they can sue someone for something, but what the asker really wants to know is if they could have a meritorious suit (assuming the development of certain facts), not whether they could simply file the papers in court and stay alive until the defendant gets it dismissed.
as an example of today’s out of control tort environment, there was a car accident where some poor guy had an epileptic siezure and crashed his car. so whiney bitch who witnessed it said that she was traumitized by the site of this guy having a siezure and sued him for it. she actually won that case. something in the $20k range, although the actual amount excapes me.
this is the need for tort reform.
another example is a guy who is 87, has alzheimers, is blind in one eye, and his 80 something wife. they owned a dry-cleaning shop way back in the 50’s, and some fucking lawyer is suing them for $1.5 million becuase he says they used to pore some sort of cleaner down the drain and that is a violation of some fucked up code.
california is one of the most notorious perpertrators of this, with mississippi, and texas coming close behind.
Move to strike as irrelevant and nonresponsive to the OP. 
Well done MegaDave. Thanks for weighing in on this one. I know everyone (especially me) was really wondering what your opinions are. Now I can sleep easier at night.
I guess you must have an aversion to reading stickies.
Sorry. That’s not fair. You must not like reading forum descriptions either. :rolleyes:
I get that this is supposed to be some sort of sarcastic comment, but to be honest i have no idea what you mean by “stickies”.
i am not trying to draw anyone in to a debate, if that is what you mean by “stickies”. The two examples I gave were merely trying to prove that you can basically sue anyone for anything regardless of the laws that are in place.
I mention Cali, Missi, and Texas because these laws in these states make it easier to sue for just about anything