But of course you have nothing to substantiate this allegation.
You admitted that firms will pay rather than endure a court trial. This is extortion. The fact that paying off is cheaper than actually exposing fraud is nothing more than legal extortion.
And has nothing to do with judges, since they will never see the case.
Lawyers and insurance companies can easily tot up the cost of going to trial, as opposed to settling for a few thousand dollars. If they don’t think there’s fraud involved, odds are they’ll settle, for all the economic reasons discussed in this thread. Since the matter never goes to court, it’s not a case of judges winking at it; it’s a simple economic, business decision.
How are the judges who aren’t involved in the settlements “winking”?
I personally cannot stand frivolous lawsuits, or people who threaten to sue other people for no good reason. Say for example I posted about what a jerk someone is, and how much I think they should go to hell. Well what if that person came and threatened me with legal action unless I took my words back or apologized? Or even worse, what if that person threatened legal action against the website I posted those comments on, such as Facebook or Twitter? That would be a really frivolous lawsuit, and would be the kind of legal bull-crap that ties up our overworked courts and costs everyone time and money and tears. I hate those kinds of people.
Underline added. Yeah, that would suck if it happened. Our courts are overworked (if they are) much more by “frivolous defenses.” People and companies that refuse to take responsibility for the harms they caused others. How many times have you (or anyone) actually been sued for what you describe. It is easy to threaten legal action, but truly frivolous lawsuits are very rare and get thrown out of court pretty quickly. In fact, a lot of lawsuits with merit get thrown out of court too.
Sometimes just the threat of a lawsuit is enough to get your way and get people to shut up, which to me is almost as sad as letting it go to court and wasting everyone’s time (maybe even sadder). But I do agree that for the most part, the truly frivolous stuff probably doesn’t waste too much time in court. I haven’t PERSONALLY known anyone who has been through a truly frivolous lawsuit, but I have heard about some really vacuous threats, some of which forced people to basically cave into the threat at least temporarily, no matter how frivolous it was. It’s very sad.
I’ve been through one. A nutter built and sold a portable sawmill. It didn’t work too well (blood etc.), so the purchaser sued the nutter. The nutter hired a lawyer to defend him. The lawyer succeeded, but the nutter refused to pay. Eventually the lawyer seized an old tractor as part payment. Over a decade later the nutter sued the lawyer over the seizure of the old tractor. I then defended the lawyer from the nutter: Superior Court to Divisional Court to Court of Appeal then back to Divisional Court, kicking his ass all the way and getting costs. He made a lot of scurrilous accusations against half a dozen of the local judiciary, so I got to meet some pretty cool out of town judges, including the fellow who was made a judge after he won a major damages award against the Church of Scientology.
But then it got weird.
The nutter then sued me for successfully defending the lawyer who had successfully defended him, sued that lawyer again, and also sued three other lawyers, one of whom had never even heard of the guy. It took years for him to pay me the costs the court ordered against him.
And then it got really weird.
He tried to launch an action in the International Court of Justice (no jurisdiction), and tried to appeal to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (not even a court). More recently he has turned to more visceral legal matters, by trying to have his elderly mother arrested for stealing her own wedding ring from herself.
Wow what a sad, interesting and somewhat amusing story. Thanks for sharing.
Does anyone else here have any examples of empty legal threats and lawsuits that annoyed people and forced them to fight the legal issues when they could have spent their time doing something else?
The Church of Scientology is infamous for filing lawsuit after lawsuit against anyone they consider “fair game”, with the sole intent of bankrupting that person.
Been reading the pit lately?
I read all the forums except market place and barn house every day.
I read every forum, but I do it in a double blinded manner. Ahhh, science!
Oh yeah I forgot about their horrible practice of frivolous lawsuits. Scientology is closely tied with movie stars and other movie celebrities, so it doesn’t surprise me that both of them are often guilty of baseless lawsuits and threats of legal action.
I’m not sure what you meant by this, but I found it amusing nonetheless. Thank you for the humorous comment.