This query is partially brought on by Sara Palin’s resignation, but not about her specifically. It’s also brought on by the comments in another thread pointing out that one company can stop another, simply because it has deeper legal pockets.
Sarah Palin cannot afford the cost of all the litigation against her, even if she is totally innocent. The solo software developer cannot afford the legal fees to withstand a large corporation.
What does this say about America today? And what, if anything, should be done about it?
She has lawyers on staff that are doing her work. It is at government expense. You can argue whether they could be performing other tasks or not, but it was not costing her anything personally.
People who play loosely with public positions get sued. It says nothing about America. It says a lot about her.
First, it’s technically incorrect to say that, even if the unspoken reason for her resignation was legal or costs of legal defense in nature, that she was ‘litigated’ out of office.
Alaska law extends standing to virtually any resident to challenge the ethics of virtually any act by virtually any state official. In theory, this is good – it ensures that no dirty politics can go unchallenged by an agreement among old pols. not to look into it. Gov. Palin was hit by a large number of these ethica allegations, many of which appear to have had no foundation – but all of which required to be defended against.
Aside from one technical violation (she used about $10,000 in state funds for something, the legitimacy of which being paid for by the state was borderline owing to lack of clarity in the ergulations, and the result was simply that she had to repay that $10,000, with no admonishment), the only substantive violation is, ironically, the legitimacy of the fundraising she did to get the money to pay for her defense against the other allegations.
Note that these were neither criminal charges nor a civil lawsuit, but ethics investigations, which are a rather unique kind of avis juridicis.
While I believe that a Palin presidency would combine the worst elements of the Buchanan, Nixon, and Bush II administrations, I think that she has been victimized by use of a quirk in Alaskan law.
Well, the alternative is to make it less easy to sue, which as a rule I am not a fan of. Even with the problems mentioned in the OP (going up against someone with deeper pockets) it seems to be a lesser problem in the US than elsewhere, in particular because of contingency work.
As someone who predominately defends cases, usually for the deep pocketed party, I’d have no problem with Rule 11 getting juiced up a little. I’d also support some experimentation in fee switching towrds the English Rule, though I don’t want that risk to make it impossible for small individuals to bring suit.
For example, I do antitrust work - the availability of triple damages encourages rolling the dice, and bringing a less than sound case to court. If the company bringing said suit were to risk covering a certain amount of the defendant’s fees, that would reduce the willingness to gamble. But that said, I (personal interest aside) like living under a legal system that gives people too much access to courts rather than too little.
I’m not really sure how we alter it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but would it be accurate to say that you have little to no actual involvement or experience with the legal system?
What is this mythical Evil Big Corp trying to stop Noble Small Company from doing exactly? What exactly is Noble Small Company, a solo software developer, trying to “withstand” exactly? Do you have specific cases that you are referring to?
Speaking as a corporate litigation consultant (someone who basically translate business and technology talk into lawyer talk), the reason corporate litigation is often expensive is because many of the issues are extremely complicated and not easily understood.
Being British and in Britain, I have zero experience with the American legal system.
Why yes I do. See the comments in this thread for an example. I’m also remembering various comments Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock Systems has made over the years.
You make my point for me: it’s expensive. A large corporation can easily afford the likes of you; a small one - let alone a lone developer - finds it much more difficult.