Costs of litigation
I just happened to come across this piece in the UK's Independent today:
Curiously, just yesterday, I was reading about another case where the court ordered the defendents' legal costs to be paid by the losing plaintiff. That was the case where Dan Brown was sued for plaigarizing The DaVinci Code. In that case the authors of the earlier book were charged something like $2 million to cover the costs of Brown's defense.
Both stuck me as odd, since it is rare, to say the least, for a court in the United States to order defendents' costs be paid by a losing plaintiff. That is usually only reserved for the most outrageous situations, where the plaintiff's case was completely frivolous and without any merit whatsoever, and even then, it's rare. I suppose the tradition in England is different.
If defendents' expenses were routinely charged to losing plaintiffs here, that would sure cut down on litigation, wouldn't it? Maybe we should move a bit toward the English system, at least for the many relatively frivolous cases that are brought.
Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the families of the dead Beatles have been left with a legal bill of up to £5m from their failed court case against the American computer giant Apple.
A judge ruled Apple Computers had not breached an agreement with the Beatles' record label, Apple Corps, to stay out of the record industry when it founded the iTunes store. Apple Corps must now pay Apple's and its own costs.
Curiously, just yesterday, I was reading about another case where the court ordered the defendents' legal costs to be paid by the losing plaintiff. That was the case where Dan Brown was sued for plaigarizing The DaVinci Code. In that case the authors of the earlier book were charged something like $2 million to cover the costs of Brown's defense.
Both stuck me as odd, since it is rare, to say the least, for a court in the United States to order defendents' costs be paid by a losing plaintiff. That is usually only reserved for the most outrageous situations, where the plaintiff's case was completely frivolous and without any merit whatsoever, and even then, it's rare. I suppose the tradition in England is different.
If defendents' expenses were routinely charged to losing plaintiffs here, that would sure cut down on litigation, wouldn't it? Maybe we should move a bit toward the English system, at least for the many relatively frivolous cases that are brought.
posted by walldon | 3:54 PM
1 Comments:
But let's not forget that "too much litigation" is a big Republican talking point: poor defenseless doctors being subjected to malpractice suits, and needing the best law firms in the country to help them fend off those Goliath patients who claim they were injured by bad medical practices; and poor defenseless multinational corporations being subjected to products liability suits, and needing the best law firms in the country to help them fend off those Goliath consumers who claim they were injured by dangerous products. The problem is that the "malpractice crisis" is a sham, and so is the need for "tort reform."
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