6 ms·

Once lawsuits can be filed by algorithm, any court system would be completely overwhelmed unless it had a) some system for limiting the number of lawsuits and/o

Once lawsuits can be filed by algorithm, any court system would be completely overwhelmed unless it had a) some system for limiting the number of lawsuits and/or b) some system for settling lawsuits that would involve an algorithm. Some system for limiting the number of lawsuits could be as simple as charging filing fees. Ones that scale in proportion to the number of lawsuits you file would be ideal (first case: free; 1,000th case: 10 million euros). Some system for settling lawsuits sounds scary, but I actually kind like the idea of an algorithm that checks the number of lawsuits you have filed, and automatically returns a case dismissal if it is above a certain threshold. I'm sure there are some grave implications for having such a cavalier approach to dismissing lawsuits, but for some reason none are occurring to me at the moment.

jared314 15y ago
And thus begins a competition between legal quants. I don't know if this is better, worse, or both.
khafra 15y ago
I think that falls into the "effect-free regulation" pile, rather than the "unanticipatedly harmful regulation" pile. Algorithmically spinning off legally distinct entities to file more lawsuits can't be that difficult.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
Some system for limiting the number of lawsuits could be as simple as charging filing fees. It seems that there is already a fee: To give you an example, the FileLawsuits method returns a structure that consists of, inter alia, the amount of court fee to pay, the value of the matter of dispute (both broken down into individual lawsuits), and a status code with a description. I assume that you can't actually settle the suit programmatically, though - otherwise, you could probably gamble on winning some percentage of lawsuits in order to pay for the fees of the losing ones. Stock markets are so 2000's. (As an aside, can we please get some sort of sane mechanism for quoting text?)
- ars 15y ago
  > (As an aside, can we please get some sort of sane mechanism for quoting text?) I've always done it like email. Or you can be a journalist, and put quote marks around what you are quoting.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    That gets messy for multi-line quotations, and paragraphs. :(
- kijin 15y ago
  > (As an aside, can we please get some sort of sane mechanism for quoting text?) I use email-style quoting with italics. But full-blown Markdown support would be so much better, especially since this is a programming-oriented website.
drostie 15y ago
If you focus too much on the lawyer filing the lawsuit then smart lawyers will prey on young graduates. If you focus too much on the plaintiff filing the lawsuit then smart lawyers will probably find a way to make special corporations which can cheaply make the complaints before being dissolved.
deleted 15y ago
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jared314 15y ago

And thus begins a competition between legal quants. I don't know if this is better, worse, or both.

khafra 15y ago

I think that falls into the "effect-free regulation" pile, rather than the "unanticipatedly harmful regulation" pile. Algorithmically spinning off legally distinct entities to file more lawsuits can't be that difficult.

pavel_lishin 15y ago

Some system for limiting the number of lawsuits could be as simple as charging filing fees. It seems that there is already a fee: To give you an example, the FileLawsuits method returns a structure that consists of, inter alia, the amount of court fee to pay, the value of the matter of dispute (both broken down into individual lawsuits), and a status code with a description. I assume that you can't actually settle the suit programmatically, though - otherwise, you could probably gamble on winning some percentage of lawsuits in order to pay for the fees of the losing ones. Stock markets are so 2000's. (As an aside, can we please get some sort of sane mechanism for quoting text?)

ars 15y ago
> (As an aside, can we please get some sort of sane mechanism for quoting text?) I've always done it like email. Or you can be a journalist, and put quote marks around what you are quoting.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  That gets messy for multi-line quotations, and paragraphs. :(
kijin 15y ago
> (As an aside, can we please get some sort of sane mechanism for quoting text?) I use email-style quoting with italics. But full-blown Markdown support would be so much better, especially since this is a programming-oriented website.

drostie 15y ago

If you focus too much on the lawyer filing the lawsuit then smart lawyers will prey on young graduates. If you focus too much on the plaintiff filing the lawsuit then smart lawyers will probably find a way to make special corporations which can cheaply make the complaints before being dissolved.

deleted 15y ago

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