Comments on: “Man Sues Couple He Kidnapped”

By: Karen Eliot

Karen Eliot — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:23:36 +0000

Whenever I hear about frivolous lawsuits, it’s always about the poor and the crazy. However the most damaging and expensive suits are those that kill innovation and those that make it impossible for citizens to work for meaningful and necessary change through the legal system. SLAPP suits are infinitely more damaging to America then suits like the above.

By: Turk

Turk — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:31:27 +0000

The reason crazy claims tell us nothing about the legal system is that, no matter what system is in place, the claim would be made anyway.

You can’t legislate away crazy, b/c crazy doesn’t care about the rules. In addition, crazy is usually quite poor or incarcerated.

You just have to hope you can get it to the judge’s attention as quickly as possible so that the case is dismissed.

By: Smart Dude

Smart Dude — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:02:08 +0000

The usual poster child for Loser Pays.

No one of course is listening. No one ever does. The innocent suffer once again.

By: Hugo S. Cunningham

Hugo S. Cunningham — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:50:43 +0000

We could establish a doctrine of “every dog is allowed one bite” (ie. is allowed one frivolous lawsuit). If a lawsuit is found frivolous, then the “vexatious litigant” would be required to put up a meaningful deposit ($500 and up?) before filing another lawsuit.

As a backstop, if the “vexatious litigant” pleaded absolute indigence, he could persuade a DA to file a meritorious lawsuit on his behalf, on the understanding that the DA would repay all the defense’s costs (and pay a political price) if this lawsuit were dubious.

By: No Name Guy

No Name Guy — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:34:40 +0000

Ron @ 5
“But there are 311 million people in this country. Anyone can file a lawsuit and there is nothing we can do to him for filling an insane lawsuit other than throwing him back in jail (and no one is suggesting that). There are probably scores of these that get filed and never get reported. But it is not exactly an indictment of our our legal system. Because no one has ever proposed a system where goofballs can’t file lawsuits.”

Loser pays would sure go a long way toward deterring many of these merit less suits.

Potential defendant to potential plaintiff: “Go ahead and sue me, losers. I’ll bankrupt YOU instead of you bankrupting me.”

By: Ron Miller

Ron Miller — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:48:09 +0000

One more thing: certainly, to JJ’s point, there are some reforms that do make sense. Starting a trial without knowing who the other parties experts are going to be is, in my opinion, a bad idea. Reasonable restrictions can help mitigate the harms. But there will always be crazy people filing crazy lawsuits under any possible system we can envision.

By: Ron Miller

Ron Miller — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:45:52 +0000

JJ, I hear ya. But what exactly is Plan B? Who is the insane pro se plaintiff gatekeeper? I think Brown would have gotten stopped in his tracks, Plessy v. Fergerson was pretty on point. Any legal system – be in here on in the USSR (did they fold?) – has to deal with this kind of problem.

By: Bill Poser

Bill Poser — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:06:43 +0000

Hiding a fugitive is a crime. It is black letter law that a contract to commit a crime is invalid. There never was any contract so there can be no breach.

By: asdfasdf

asdfasdf — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 01:27:46 +0000

Counterclaim plaintiff's filing.

By: asdfasdf

asdfasdf — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 01:25:56 +0000

It’s a time-honored tradition to poke fun at prisoners’ bizarre pro se suits. To interject a bit of reality here, the suit in question was a counterclaim, as anyone who read the article (which excludes, as is typical for blogs, 99% of commenters) would know. Moreover, the counterclaim denies that original plaintiffs were held at knifepoint, so I suspect this denial would be taken as true for 12(b)(6) purposes. Obviously there is no system that can prevent a person who is sued from making an improper counterclaim. And I highly doubt this counterclaim required more than a de minimis amount of time to defend, since the original plaintiffs had already retained the attorney in their suit against the original defendant/counterclaim plaintiff.