I was just thinking of the old “double jeopardy” clause. Even though that is mostly for criminal prosecution.
Suppose my best friend gets an abortion.
Then I sue her.
And then quietly give her back the money two weeks later.
Well, that’s taught her hasn’t it.
She has already been taken to court once. So presumably, can’t be sued again…?
Would this work? Or is this totally uncharted ground?
I don’t live in the USA at all, so rest assured that this is totally hypothetical.
Ordinarily, anyone who’s been wronged by an act can sue the person who committed the act. If any one person suing were the end of it, then you’d get absurdities like someone embezzling $10 million dollars from their employer and $10 from their brother-in-law, deliberately losing the suit from their brother-in-law, and then expecting that to protect them from the company.
This new Texas law, however, removes the requirement of the person suing having been wronged. That’s totally uncharted ground.
That’s what I was wondering. I expect that this whole thing will fall apart anyways, but in theory, if it held up, what’s to stop everyone in the US from suing every Texas resident that has an abortion for $10,000?
Granted, I think, or heard, that that’s the idea. That the people who put the law in place know it likely won’t hold up, but the idea is that people won’t want to get an abortion just based on the fear of suddenly being sued by dozens of people and being financially wrecked.
Is it safe to assume that there’s ACLU (and lots of other) lawyers ready and willing to fight this that would be willing to foot the legal bill (and any money awarded to other parties) if a woman is willing to have an abortion and make the public aware of it, so they can help get rid of this?
Just to be clear, it’s care providers and those assisting a patient that are at risk of being sued.
There are a few issues with your hypo:
But the biggest flaw in your question is that nobody is performing abortions after 6 weeks in the state of Texas as of Sep 1. That is why it is so nefarious that SCOTUS did not block the law until the legal issues are resolved. Nobody is getting an abortion that violates this law, so nobody will get sued. So the validity of the law cannot be challenged since it’s never been used.
Except, of course, it has already met it’s goal - nobody is performing abortions in Texas.
On the other hand, whether someone did in fact aid in an abortion would itself be a question for the court to decide. So you couldn’t just sue anyone who actually did aid in an abortion; you could sue anybody.
I assume more than one person could sue the perp. Imagine a million people suing some poor shlub for $10,000 apiece. That’s when I would just hang it up and go be a desert hermit or something.
This isn’t actually that novel–you’ve always been able to file suit against anyone for any reason. It’s a question of what the courts will allow to proceed beyond anything but a very summary dismissal.
While technically correct, this is somewhat misleading. Lawyers are preventing from bringing lawsuits they know to be frivolous on pain of being sanctioned by the bar. Individuals who repeated file frivolous lawsuits get named vexatious litigants. And getting suits dismissed for lack of standing is, relatively speaking, cheap and easy.
This law gives everyone in the state standing to sue, so lawyers will not be sanctioned for filing suits. Fee reversal against “plaintiffs” is explicitly forbidden. And standing is explicitly granted which dramatically raises the bar for successfully defending against the suit.
This is actually that novel.
I expect that instead what will happen is that some other state will pull the same trick, but under a different appeal court. For some reason the news isn’t discussing, the Circuit Court for Texas declined to finish hearing the appeal for an injunction which is why it ended up in the Supreme Court. If a different appeal court provides an injunction, then the Supreme Court would have to provide a more explicit reason why the injunction should be overturned, particularly if the appeals court raked the concept of the law over the coals. .
BTW, the trick Of “we’ll make an under the table deal where you sue me” doesn’t work - has already been ruled highly unethical. For a lawsuit, you need a real dispute. Some of the trolls trying to sue over movie piracy had a trick where they made a deal with someone to sue them for downloading a movie, the person would deliberately lose, and the judge (not knowing it was fixed) would assign a fairly high penalty for the offense. Then the trolls would take that high award as precedent when pursuing others, to “encourage” them to settle out of court.
Actually, the biggest flaw is that double jeopardy applies only to criminal law. I’m surprised that I’m the first person in this thread to mention that.
Or at least, you used to.
I think it’s mentioned in the OP 
You still need a real dispute, though. Even if it is “You performed that abortion vs. No, I didn’t.”
You need something that the judge is there to make a judgment on. If you are in agreement (not in a real dispute) you just shake hands and go about your day.
What happens if somebody radical left-wing feminist country and western singer and all their fans just decides to sue the governor for aiding an abortion? How much evidence do you have to submit? What kind of sworn statements do you have to make? How far would you get?
Ignoring the debate about the current Texas “law”, what I meant was for any other court action the two parties making a side deal behind the judge’s back and then faking a dispute in court is a quick road to serious judicial sanctions.
With the action against a plethora of Trump’s lawyers in Michigan, you are seeing the lower bound of what passes for ab actual complaint. Repeating nonsense from people and submitting it to the court as fact when it was either obviously false or the lawyers had willful blindness, doing what the judge called a “historic and profound abuse of the judicial process” can result not just your case thrown out, but paying the other side’s costs, and being referred to all the bar associations to which you are accredited for sanctions including possible disbarment…
But then, this law may be written to prevent at least the awarding of attorney fees.
Another interesting point - if the Texas law allows only one automatic award of $10,000 then it will become a race among hundreds of litigants to be the first to win their case and get the award, thus guaranteeing an even greater flood of litigants.
It is a kind of punitive suit and that seems to matter.
Because if not, then the taxi driver could be sued by literally millions of people over and over again.
PRESUMABLY, there is something in place to prevent that. On the other hand, there is nothing normal about this situation, so who knows.
[quote=“md-2000, post:16, topic:950045, full:true”]Another interesting point - if the Texas law allows only one automatic award of $10,000 then it will become a race among hundreds of litigants to be the first to win their case and get the award, thus guaranteeing an even greater flood of litigants.
[/quote]Yes so that too is related to my original question. I figured, if the first (and only???) person to sue is a friend of the defendent, then that effectively gets them off the hook.
But the whole point of the law is that while the first person is automatically awarded the money, a thousand others can sue too. And the defendant has to pay for a lawyer to answer each of these lawsuits, or risk losing by default.
As I gather from the news articles, the guarantee of $10,000 does not stop a judge from awarding any other amount also if the first case has already been won. Plus, if the defendant loses, apparently this law says they are on the hook for the plaintiff’s legal costs. So even if the award is only $1, it comes with the other side’s lawyer fees that likely amount to several hundred or thousand dollars. Presumably all the other side has to do is prove an illegal ( i.e.>6 weeks) abortion took place. If the plaintiff’s lawyers have to do discovery etc. for the case, that racks up the bills and the defendant has to submit to discovery or risk losing by default.
The law is specifically designed to abuse the legal system by flooding someone with an avalanche of lawsuits by people who normally should have no standing to sue, and at the very least go broke paying for your own defense lawyers. .
Also note that if a perfectly legal “less than 6 weeks” abortion is performed, there’s the risk the doctor (or anyone else) is nevertheless flooded with lawsuits that (s)he has to defend, on their own dime, to prove it was legal. This then could give the anti-abortion plaintiffs access to medical details they should not have, including identity of the patient.
And if the doctor loses a suit, even by default, this can be taken by the state as grounds to refer the doctor to the state medical board for discipline including loss of medical license.
Under this law, if the defendant wins, they’re also on the hook for the legal costs.