A frolic and detour over at Bizarro-Overlawyered led me to this post over at The Tortellini, which parrots the common trial lawyer argument that there’s no need for tort reform because courts currently have the power to sanction frivolous lawsuits. But the example cited actually demonstrates exactly the opposite: current procedures are insufficient for preventing frivolous litigation.
In 2004, an Ohio resident named Thomas Starks arrived at an Econo Lodge in Tennessee at 4:40 AM. He spent a few hours relaxing, and then went to sleep at 7:30 AM. A few hours later the hotel called to wake him up, saying that he had missed the 11:00 AM checkout time. I guess he was cranky from lack of sleep, because he insisted that he hadn’t stayed for a full day and therefore shouldn’t have to pay the full day’s room rental rate of $46. Eventually, he paid up and left.
The horrible treatment by the hotel in forcing him to actually pay for his room led, as you can probably guess, to a lawsuit (filed pro se) against Econo Lodge and Choice Hotels — but, for some reason, not the operators of the Econo Lodge franchise in question. Starks demanded a $46 refund, $750,000 in damages, and a lifetime pass to stay free at Econo Lodge (I’m not making this up. If you can figure out why someone with $750,000 would stay at an Econo Lodge, let me know.)
The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed; for the many reasons explained by the court (PDF of opinion):
But Starks proceeded to sue the wrong people, in the wrong place, for a wrong wrong: (1) it wasn’t a wrong, (2) Hamilton County, Ohio, was not the right place, and (3) and even if there were a wrong, it wasn’t committed by these defendants.
Indeed, the court found this suit so flagrantly frivolous that it assessed sanctions of $2,500 against Mr. Starks. So what’s the problem? Well, perhaps it might be clearer if I point out that the above quote is actually from the appellate court. That’s right: Mr. Starks filed this suit, had it dismissed, and then had the nerve to appeal the trial court’s ruling. Only at that latter stage of the case were these sanctions — which almost certainly do not come close to compensating the defendants for their legal fees — imposed. (The court left the door open to possibly increasing the sanctions if the attorneys filed additional paperwork, but did not guarantee it; in any case, the judges were skeptical that the defendants would ever be able to collect.) And even so, one of the judges felt the need to apologize for the sanctions: “While the court system must remain open for the redress of a citizen’s perceived injustices, there is a point at which even the most liberal interpretation of personal rights fails in the light of common sense. This is one such case.”
The strange lesson that Stephanie Mencimer, who blogs at The Tortellini, takes away from this?
Obviously you can argue that Econo Lodge was put out by having to deal with the suit (as the odds that they’ll ever collect the fine from Sparks I suspect are slim to none), but that seems like a small price to pay, in my book, for a democratic legal system. Letting judges make these determinations on a case by case basis ensures that people with legitimate beefs still get their day in court–unlike some of the other measures the president would like to see enacted that would have the federal government making blanket decisions on who can sue and who can’t, without ever considering the individual facts of a case.
Of course Mencimer thinks it a “small price to pay”; she isn’t the one paying. (Actually, we all are, but the “tort tax” is hidden, while the legal fees are obvious.) It’s unclear to me what imposing thousands of dollars in legal fees on innocent people (which Mencimer describes as merely being “put out”) has to do with “democracy,” either.
The rest of Mencimer’s post is filled with strawmen, as no tort reformer has ever proposed “blanket decisions on who can sue.” The real takeaway point here is simply that the current system does not provide enough of a disincentive for people to stop filing frivolous suits. Sanctions are rarely imposed, even in the most extreme cases, and even in the infrequent situations when they are, they are rarely sufficient to compensate the victims of the litigation.
4 Comments
The question, David, is what the meaning of ‘frivolous’ is?
There used to a guy in the patent office who defined frivolus as violating the second law of thermodynamics. There actually was some legal arguement to allow appeal, but the second law prevailed.
A few months ago Ted Frank told us about a lawnmover case. The mower had a kinematic tendacy ala the ‘Carrie’ movie and flipped over three times on a 16% grade. The plaintif atorney claimed the grade to be 11%.
Our culture believes that drug companies put profits over health and yet fights to get into clinical trials.
Seat belts and engineering of a robust driver’s space saved a lady’s life, but the car company was sued anyway.
Companies submit to arduous regulation to demonstate then concern for safty and quality and yet are subjected to a moronic predjudice against corporations.
A lot of these problems come from our law schools. Judges claim that two plus two is three is a matter of fact and wrongfully put the matter to an ignorant jury while ignoring the litigation fine of the defendent. The Breast Implant matter was exactly this way.
Let’s level Harvard!
You’d think that at some point, even the plaintiffs’ bar might be willing to get behind better sanctions for self-serving reasons because claims running wild cheapen their overall project. But maybe that calculation is wrong, I don’t know. I think that right now, lawsuit entitlement is so deeply ingrained in our culture that no reform could be expected to achieve fast results. Ultimately, for pro se litigants at least, it’s about the individual’s sense of personal restraint in the face of imposition of social costs. For many, that sense is badly atrophied.
“While the court system must remain open for the redress of a citizen’s perceived injustices, there is a point at which even the most liberal interpretation of personal rights fails in the light of common sense. This is one such case.”
I am glad that this Court can recognize a flagrant abuse of the court system. However, why do judges have to bend over backwards to allow frivolous lawsuits? It is as if they are saying that they are incapable of using a modicum of intelligence in deciding whether or not to allow a law suit to proceed. It the judges think so little of their own intelligence, maybe they should be in another line of work. It goes without saying that if we had a looser pays system we would have less of these abuses happening. Of course since this was a pro se litigant then it this case it probably wouldn’t have made a difference.
Always generous with other people’s time and money. Everything boils down to who sues whom and who sues first.