I think it might kill DT if he had to pay the opposition the $1.1M in legal fees. Seems warranted though Hillary Clinton demands over $1 million in fees after Russiagate suit tossed (msn.com) Hillary Clinton is joining other defendants in petitioning a court to compel her 2016 nemesis, former President Donald Trump, to cough up about $1.06 million in legal fees for a rejected lawsuit against them. Decrying Trump's sprawling racketeering lawsuit that claimed Clinton and others peddled false allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia as a “political stunt," Clinton and the other defendants argued they deserved reimbursement from Trump. "Because of the particularly vexatious and frivolous nature of the Complaint and Amended Complaint in this case, the Court should use its inherent authority [to] ... impose sanctions on Plaintiff himself for the filing of both the original and amended Complaint," Clinton's team wrote. In March, Trump filed a lawsuit against Clinton and a cadre of other Democrats and allies. Christopher Steele, a former British spy who compiled the now-discredited anti-Trump dossier, was also listed among the defendants.
This would be awesome, but don’t hold your breath. Judges almost never grant fees for vexatious litigation. It is exceedingly rare.
Well maybe not the Russian overlords. I hear they are having to fight wars with 1959 rifles and 30 year old drone technology from Iran.
I think it would be great if the US had the "loser pays" system. It would cut down tremendously on frivolous lawsuits.
A horrid idea. It would also discourage entirely legitimate lawsuits, AND possibly revictimize the person who sued simply because they couldn’t get a jury (or possibly just a sole judge) to agree. What if a corrupt judge dismisses a case? What if the corporate defendant just had better and higher priced lawyers compared to the individual who brought the case? But the case itself was factually legitimate. Are you going to make some peon pay for high priced corporate lawyers on the other side, when discrepancies in representation may be the reason they “lost” in the first place? What you suggest would corrupt the system even further than it already is. A better idea I propose would be a sort of points system for serial litigators and people who chronically file losing cases, particularly the lawyers who sign on to them. These are the so-called frivolous suits. The winning % should matter, even a “serial litigator” that always came out on the right side of the law or wins civil cases I’d have a hard time saying should be punished. But a lawyer who chronically wastes the courts time with losing or nonsensical cases, needs to find a new line of work and/or should be fined as the L’s pile up.
What’s a “serial litigator”? Large companies, have significant litigation. Depending in the industry, small companies have significant litigation. Defining “serial litigants” would be a daunting task.
In FL and maybe elsewhere, if a settlement offer is made but rejected and the plaintiff loses when the case is tried, then the plaintiff may be responsible for defendant’s legal costs. Please correct if wrong.
Seriously, I get that it wouldn’t be easy. Big corps almost us it as strategy to intimidate (high priced lawyers vs. the “little guy”). My take was more that if we are going to punish people, it ought not to be the person who loses one civil case, but rather the person who loses MANY cases. I wasn’t being specific by any means, just saying id consider a points type system to determine who keeps bringing losing cases, then after that the bar should review whether it falls under unethical or malpractice behavior. From an outsiders perspective, it seems that it takes EXTREME malfeasance for a lawyer to be disciplined. I’d rather not punish innocent people to get a few bad apples, instead just focus on the worst of them and make it a bit more expeditious to remove/fine them such that the serial litigation is no longer worth it.
I litigate for a living. I don’t believe forcing a losing party to pay fees will move the needle very far, at least in terms of my field (business litigation). First, the contingency lawyers in my field don’t want to take a loser case because there’s no real return. And everyone who litigates appreciates that exorbitant cost of litigation regardless of merit. Add in the fluidity and uncertainty of the litigation, with the unpredictability in outcome, most cases settle and rarely do settling cases include fees (obviously not including classic fee-shifting cases like overtime and ADL lawsuits). Your suggestion of fees to serial litigants might actually increase the costs of litigation by adding another round of litigation over the issue of awarding fees. It never ends.
I didn’t mean fees for merely losing a case, I mentioned the hypothetical “points” system for those who win/loses civil cases. I suggested once a losing lawyer reaches a certain threshold of points they should be looked at by a disciplinary board (presumably the bar), at that point fines would come into play as a form of discipline (short of just outright disbarring them for lacking ethics or possibly being incompetent to excessively lose for their clients). Admittedly, I put no prior thought into this scheme and in fact just made it up, but still sounds a bit better than “loser pays” due to the concerns I originally mentioned about individual litigants already being disadvantaged.
But your point is well taken. Litigation costs alone are out of control, and it is VERY DIFFICULT for most people to afford litigation. I don’t have the answers, but the topic is absolutely ripe for discussion.
Maybe the reason litigation costs are out of control is because some lawyers (not saying who) have to charge exorbitant fees to cover the massive expense associated with spoiling a ridiculously adorable black and white pup (not saying which). The finest dog food, dog treats, and doggie toys all add up... Are those fees being passed on to those this hiring attorney? I can't help but wonder...
