3 ms·
What a screwed up system. Seemingly there should a vetting process where the court system determines a claim at least has merits before the defendant has to was
by smattiso 14y ago
What a screwed up system. Seemingly there should a vetting process where the court system determines a claim at least has merits before the defendant has to waste his/her resources fighting it.
As it stands it is way too easy to use as a weapon to sue people into submission. Although I think this is already well known.
- jarrett 14y agoThat might not be a terrible idea. It might help weed out some truly frivolous lawsuits. But consider this: To be fair to plaintiffs, the bar for "not frivolous" would have to be fairly low. I suspect that a fair pre-vetting system would only weed out a tiny fraction of lawsuits. Probably, even most lawsuits that end with a successful motion to dismiss would make it past the type of preliminary review by the court that you're proposing. So it's a good idea, but I think something more would be needed to help protect the little gal/guy from legal bullying. (BTW, I'm not saying this particular case is an instance of legal bullying. We only have one party's perspective.)
- shasta 14y agoIt seems reasonable to me that the plaintiff would have to establish the elements of their case before requiring any response from a defendant (though of course response should be allowed). Only after a court has found that the defendant needs to mount a defense should he need to hire a lawyer. Instead, our courts generally work the other way -- if you don't show up, you lose no matter how ridiculous the other guy's claims are. The legal system would benefit greatly from being framed as a cost/benefit optimization problem instead of as reasoning in a byzantine para-consistent logic.