We’ve all heard that anyone can sue anyone else for anything. We also know that 25% of Americans are indeed retarded.
So, do big companies like GE, Exxon, GM, etc. have to deal with frivoulous lawsuits filed by wackjobs on a daily basis? If so, is that a major expense for firms? If not, what keeps it from happening?
Big companies have “threats” of being sued on a regular basis. That is why they have their own in-house legal department. That is part of what they do. In the vast majority of cases, a simple letter from the legal department ends things once and for all. There are only a limited number of entities that at would try to sue McDonald’s or Microsoft for example. It isn’t like Grandma can go to her small town lawyer and have him commence with suing the daylights out of the Golden Arches or Bill Gates for $2000 down, 30% commission. Even if it somehow got started, that is where the legal department for Mega-Corp comes in. The high-profile yet seemingly small-time suits you see brought against big companies are almost always backed by some much bigger and more powerful group behind the scenes. Regular people don’t have the resources to get such things started at all.
That’s complete nonsense. Filing a lawsuit costs a couple hundred bucks in court and process server fees.
Actually fighting a lawsuit certainly takes more resources, but most frivolous filers are looking for a fast settlement anyway.
Shagnasty is both right and wrong. You can find a lawyer who will sue a big corporation for $2000 down and 30% commission. In fact, you can find a lawyer (or a lawyer will find you) to sue a big corporation, and the lawyer will agree to pay all the costs if you lose, only taking something (usually 40% plus costs) if he wins. These are the lawyers with big war chests that they’ll use to support risky (or frivolous) litigation; if they win, they win big. The Vioxx litigation is an example – the plaintiffs’ lawyers (who do not have that great of a track record so far) have taken on very risky litigation, since they need to prove that their clients’ injury was caused by Vioxx, not by the fact that their clients have all the risk factors for the injury and didn’t take Vioxx for that long.
But if you look at a corporation’s submissions to the SEC (its 10-K for example) you will usually see a description of some of the bigger litigation it faces; and its annual report will generally tell you how much money it spent on litigation. I can’t say that big corporations get sued “daily” but for most of them, they get sued pretty frequently. Some lawsuits take longer to resolve than others, some have more merit than others. It’s hard to say whether the lawsuits get filed by “whackjobs,” although some do.
I was in court the other day, and my case was last on the morning calendar. Normally there’s only one bailiff in the courtroom, but I noticed a second bailiff come in and stand in the back of the courtroom. The court called a case, and the plaintiff stepped up. He was suing a number of corporations – including a radio station, that I remember clearly – because of the voices in his head. He wanted the court to make them stop speaking to him, because they were behind some CIA plot. I frankly couldn’t follow the whole thing.
But I think he was a frequent litigant, given that the bailiffs seemed to recognize him. Procedurally, the case was there on the defendants’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit as frivolous; the judge gave the plaintiff about five minutes to argue (an interminably long time, frankly), and then took the matter under submission. Both bailiffs escorted the plaintiff out. I presume the case was dismissed, but the defendants still had to move to dismiss it and show up at the hearing. Don’t know how frequently that happens, but clearly it does happen.
I wouldn’t say daily, but based on the last time I checked, my employer gets sued way more often than I do.
It’s a Fortune 1000, and if you google its name, the first few pages of results will always show 4 or 5 lawsuits per calendar year… not every lawsuit shows up on google, either.
Back when I had a few Fortune 500 corporations among my clients I had some insight into what the legal departments were working on. The vast majority of the work was disputes over contracts, patents and royalties, suppliers threatening to sue over payment or delivery terms and all sorts of other mind-numbing exchanges of letters and phone calls.
There were also a lot of instances of individuals suing each other and wanting to drag the company in as some sort of expert witness to testify that since the defendent was using the product properly there was no way the plaintiff could have been hurt. Since a company representative was not on the scene when the accident happened, the company had no desire to get involved in those kinds of fights.
I think there is a difference between the question of whether large corporations get sued daily and the question of whether large corporations get hit by frivolous lawsuits on a daily basis.
Any company that operates a large number of locations open to the general public will be sued regularly for property-related claims (for instance, slip and fall, parking lot accidents, etc.). Any company with a large number of employees will be sued regularly on employment-related claim (for instance, discrimination, wage payment disputes, etc.). Any company manufacturing potentially injury-causing products will be sued regularly on products liability claims. And there are plenty of other common types of suits brought against large companies
The overwhelming majority of claims are not “frivolous” in that they are brought having a valid basis in law and in fact. Most of these claims are covered by insurance, and are resolved by settlement (often quite modest). In many of these, the company need do little more than pass the claim to their insurer.
Of course, there are the truly wackball ,“tin foil hat” claims that will pop up with some regularlity, but I would guess that most companies don’t get those on a daily basis.