4 ms·

If the “award” went to charity instead of lawyers and “victims” it would eliminate a lot of the lawsuits. The incentives are entirely wrong in these lawsuits.

gruez 7y ago
If it goes to some random charity rather than the plaintiffs/lawyers, who is going to bring these cases to court?
- gowld 7y ago
  Anyone who cares.
  - gruez 7y ago
    ...and is willing to foot the tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars for lawyers and court fees.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    People who aren't rich care about things but can't afford to litigate them in real actual courts which have the power to effect meaningful change without access to an expensive legal system. This means that there has to be a relatively large sum of money available to inspire a lawyer to work without being paid up front on the expectation of future reward or the case wont happen no matter how warranted. Expecting society to thrive on the largess of the rich is a recipe for disaster.
liability 7y ago
Yes, making it so only the rich could hope to afford winning a court case (let alone losing one) is a great way to reduce the number of people using the legal system; excellent insight...
- gowld 7y ago
  Small claims court is free.
  - liability 7y ago
    And completely unsuitable for a wide range of important grievances.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    > Small claims court is free. It is not free in my jurisdiction. I would think it’s not free in most jurisdictions.
  - ajross 7y ago
    This is literally about a case before (OK, strictly a request to) the supreme court of the united states, having been through multiple previous courts already. How do you propose elevating such a case from... a small claims court?
- remote_phone 7y ago
  Blind people who can’t access a web site don’t suffer from a large damage that deserves a large payout. Period. End of story. Yes web sites should be accessible. But there should be a better way to incentivize this than civil lawsuits. This has been going on for decades and needs to be stopped. Even Clint Eastwood was sued in Carmel.
  - lykr0n 7y ago
    What a fucked up train of thought. It's like saying "this person can't sit in the front of the bus- it's not a large damage. We shouldn't worry about it." Fuck you. It's that kind of thought that makes people think cashless stores are a good idea. It's exclusionary and normalizes us forgetting about the outliers of society. There is a better way to do it. It's called a law. People are required to follow it, and if they don't there are two ways we solve it. Criminal or Civil Law Suits.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
That would incentive charities and their supporters to push for these lawsuits. If we really want to remove the economic incentives, the punitive fines collected should be destroyed. This would contract to overall money supply by that amount, giving everyone a trivially small increase in the value of their money. Even for the largest punitive awards it would be too small for anyone benefiting from it to measure.

gruez 7y ago

If it goes to some random charity rather than the plaintiffs/lawyers, who is going to bring these cases to court?

gowld 7y ago
Anyone who cares.
- gruez 7y ago
  ...and is willing to foot the tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars for lawyers and court fees.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  People who aren't rich care about things but can't afford to litigate them in real actual courts which have the power to effect meaningful change without access to an expensive legal system. This means that there has to be a relatively large sum of money available to inspire a lawyer to work without being paid up front on the expectation of future reward or the case wont happen no matter how warranted. Expecting society to thrive on the largess of the rich is a recipe for disaster.

liability 7y ago

Yes, making it so only the rich could hope to afford winning a court case (let alone losing one) is a great way to reduce the number of people using the legal system; excellent insight...

gowld 7y ago
Small claims court is free.
- liability 7y ago
  And completely unsuitable for a wide range of important grievances.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  > Small claims court is free. It is not free in my jurisdiction. I would think it’s not free in most jurisdictions.
- ajross 7y ago
  This is literally about a case before (OK, strictly a request to) the supreme court of the united states, having been through multiple previous courts already. How do you propose elevating such a case from... a small claims court?
remote_phone 7y ago
Blind people who can’t access a web site don’t suffer from a large damage that deserves a large payout. Period. End of story. Yes web sites should be accessible. But there should be a better way to incentivize this than civil lawsuits. This has been going on for decades and needs to be stopped. Even Clint Eastwood was sued in Carmel.
- lykr0n 7y ago
  What a fucked up train of thought. It's like saying "this person can't sit in the front of the bus- it's not a large damage. We shouldn't worry about it." Fuck you. It's that kind of thought that makes people think cashless stores are a good idea. It's exclusionary and normalizes us forgetting about the outliers of society. There is a better way to do it. It's called a law. People are required to follow it, and if they don't there are two ways we solve it. Criminal or Civil Law Suits.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

That would incentive charities and their supporters to push for these lawsuits. If we really want to remove the economic incentives, the punitive fines collected should be destroyed. This would contract to overall money supply by that amount, giving everyone a trivially small increase in the value of their money. Even for the largest punitive awards it would be too small for anyone benefiting from it to measure.