A frivolous lawsuit is a lawsuit that is filed by a party or attorney who is aware they are without merit, because of a lack of supporting legal argument or factual basis for the claims (Legal). Sometimes, this lawsuit is pointed at an entire organization because of an injury or problem caused by something they provide to consumers. Sometimes, they actually win. A number of economic resources that go into these lawsuits, being time and money, is outrageous (Post). There is a multitude of other possibilities that companies could use these resources to better the economy, and even more ways it could better our lives. A frivolous lawsuit takes the exact same amount of time almost any other lawsuit like it would take. The problem with this …show more content…
This person can sometimes be a large, or small, corporation or organization that often has to deal with a lawsuit that has been placed upon them. The time higher officials have to spend in order to deal with this, depending on the size and budget of the company, could instead be spent dealing with other opportunities available to them, such as investments or bettering their products. Instead, they get the privilege of having to deal with an unforgiving customer, who happens to be the type of person to go to court on an issue (Jacoby). For example, Richard Overton sued Anheuser-Busch for false advertising of their beer. He wanted $10,000 for the mental and physical damage brought to him when he drank the beverage, finding the visions of women and a beach from the commercial for that beverage did not happen for him (10 Ridiculously). The problem with this is that the case lasted over six months until it was finally decided (OVERTON). This is half of year spent on a lawsuit, rather than them making their product better and bettering the advertising for it. What if you were waiting for that very court to discuss a lawsuit between you and the person who caused it, all while the person injured in a possible accident, with their life on the line and a certain amount of time available to them. Imagine if this …show more content…
One huge example of this is when a man, after trying to sue multiple companies and individuals, decided to sue himself while in prison for five million dollars. Which, because he was suing against himself, ended up working, but because he was in prison felt stated that because he was in prison and unemployed, that the state should pay the lawsuit, which thankfully did not happen (Press). This is the kind of stuff that could almost ruin part of the economy. Why is it that we, as a nation. Even think about allowing people to go around and attempt to sue themselves, only to have someone else to pay it off? Another factor that comes into play is their mental sanity. Two great examples are when a man sued Bank of America for exactly 1,784 billion trillion dollars, then asking for exactly $200,164,000 the day after for the trouble he’s gone through with the lawsuit. The second being that a man sued both David Blaine and David Copperfield for stealing his godly powers, saying that they “used witchcraft to extort his powers” (10 Ridiculously). Luckily, he was unable to win the case, seeing as the jury found the case absurd. This is absolutely unbelievable, also just to note, he is proven to have psychological problems, after being found to have recordings of himself saying that Bill Gates will run against him in the 2008 election. These people believe that what has been
Damages are a fundamental principle in the American legal system. However, a number of recent cases in the United States have sparked a debate on the issue, the most famous one being the “hot coffee lawsuit”1. In 1994, Stella Liebeck bought coffee at a McDonald’s restaurant, spilt it, and was severely burnt. She sued the McDonald’s company, received $160,000 in compensatory damages, and $2.9 million in punitive damages. A judge then reduced the punitive damages to $480,000. The final out-of-court settlement was of approximately $500,000. For many, this case is frivolous (meaning that the plaintiff’s prospects of being successful were low or inexistent), but it really highlights the question of excessive punitive damages compared to the damage suffered and its causes.
Criticisms of lawyers are the topic in Richard A. Wasserstrom's article "Lawyers as Professionals: Some Moral Issues." Wasserstrom broke this topic into two main areas of discussion. The first suggests that lawyers operate with essentially no regard for any negative impact of their efforts on the world at large. Analysis of the relationship that exists between the lawyer and their client was the second topic of discussion. "Here the charge is that it is the lawyer-client relationship which is morally objectionable because it is a relationship which the lawyer dominates and in which the lawyer typically, and perhaps inevitably, treats the client in both an impersonal and a paternalistic fashion."
People are represented in court by two kinds of lawyers, court-appointed lawyers and public defenders, which mean "hired lawyers" (Green, 2001). People that have higher income can hire their own lawyers. The lower and middle-income people are mainly the ones who rely on court appointed lawyers. These people don't have the money to hire a lawyer. Court appointed lawyers are not working in your best interest for many reasons.
Medical malpractice lawsuits are an extremely serious topic and have affected numerous patients, doctors, and hospitals across the country. Medical malpractice is defined as “improper, unskilled or negligent treatment of a patient by a physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or other health care professional” (Medical malpractice, n.d.). If a doctor acts negligent and causes harm to a patient, malpractice lawsuits arise. Negligence is the concept of the liability concerning claims of medical malpractice, making this type of litigation part of tort law. Tort law provides that one person may litigate negligence to recover damages for personal injury. Negligence laws are designed to deter careless behavior and also to compensate victims for any negligence.
Our forefathers were bright enough to establish a system of government with a series of checks and balances to maintain a balanced government. For the past decade a series of checks and balances has begun to fail our government. In our failing system of government inmates have taken advantage of the court system and have flooded it with an inconceivable number of frivolous lawsuits. Laurel Walters, a writer for the Christian Science Monitor, investigated inmates' lawsuits and found that these "recreational litigators...are suing the courts as an intramural sports activity." Action needs to be taken in order to rectify and protect "US" from this squandering of our tax payer provided funds and resources. Today in a world when knowledge is power, I'm ready to hand other tax payers an entire empire.
A study found that public defenders have an “average sentence … [that] was almost three years longer than the average for clients of private lawyers” (Hoffman). In addition, the same study found that most criminal defendants are “marginally indigent,” or afford to hire a private lawyer with their friends and family pitching in to pay the costs (Hoffman). As a result, the accused opt for hiring a private lawyer to represent them in court. This doesn’t mean that a private lawyer could secure a win for the defendant, with more time and resources dedicated, a stronger argument could be made to prove the defendant’s
Throughout the years there have been limitless legal cases presented to the court systems. All cases are not the same. Some cases vary from decisions that are made by a single judge, while other cases decisions are made by a jury. As cases are presented, they typically start off as disputes, misunderstandings, or failure to comply, among other things. It is possible to settle some cases outside of the courts, but that does require understanding and cooperation by all parties involved.
However, these lawsuits also require that jurisdictions put in a lot of money that they may never get
For starters when it comes to lawyers it’s not always winning every case that you come across, but it’s the matter of representing your client in the best possible way that you can, it is keeping their confidentiality agreement, provide them with the best options as possible and keeping an open and honest
Frivolous Lawsuits As children our parents tried to instill in all of us good moral judgment and common sense. However, if I was to open the newspaper I would surely find any number of articles on the latest frivolous lawsuit, these being even more outrageous than the ones in yesterday’s paper. How have we as a society, which is completely capable of rational thinking, allowed ourselves to become so intertwined in the blaming game?
Before the jury decides a verdict, the last step in the trial process is the closing arguments. There were no closing arguments because the parties had to settle on nine million dollars. They did this because the plaintiff’s attorneys went bankrupt due to this case and they couldn’t afford to invest any more money into the case. Beatrice Foods ended up being not liable for the deaths of children so they were allowed to leave the case. Due to this, only W.R. Grace had to settle with the plaintiff. Later on in 1988, Jan Schlichtmann brought this case to the EPA’s attention and the EPA decided to bring lawsuits against the companies. W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods ended up having to pay for their huge mistake. They had to pay for the largest chemical cleanup in the Northeastern which cost sixty- four million dollars.
In addition, private citizens can also file a civil lawsuit on behalf of the government against an organization for violations of the FCA. Once the individual files a claim with the court, the claim is sealed for 60 days to allow government to investigate the allegations and decide whether to intervene in the claim. If the government decides to pursue the allegations, the individual who filed the claim can collect up to 15% to 25% of the amount recovered by the government (The False Claims Act: A Primer). However, if the government decides not to intervene, the individual has the right to pursue the claim privately and can recover between 25% to 30% of the settlement amount (The False Claims Act: A
One cause of the discrepancy among the case outcomes of private and public defenses is that indigent defendants tend to be in custody instead of on bond like many of those with private attorneys, which results
While adversarial legalism satisfies the American want for complete protection by a purposefully fragmented government, the effects on the individual are highly undesirable. The cost and unreliability associated with litigant activism and formal contestation have the strong possibility of discouraging citizens from pushing forward in dispute and criminal claims. Unfortunately, these are the consequences of adversarial legalism in America.
Premised on the above insinuations, this paper seek to affirm the merits of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) over the conventional litigation system in other to debunk the opinion of liberal culture which positions adversarial procedures as an ideal dispute resolution mechanism.