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As I pointed out in the comment, almost every other rich country has this. In spite of this, you and @Amadan seem to think it's pretty much impossible. Have you checked what those other countries do in response to the situations you describe? For example, you write:
The link I posted mentioned caps on recoverable fees--did you not even look at it?
Yeah, every other country has a much different legal system and culture than the US. The question is which is the cart and which is the horse WRT fee shifting.
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I only see a Wikipedia article what are you talking about on caps.
And caps wouldn’t solve the issues I’m talking about. If your suing city of development just create a new entity with no assets. If you lose the entity goes bankrupt. If you win then you also get an extra bonus of your legal fees paid. This would seem to drive up costs for the person being sued.
Theoretically I guess you could require someone to be able to afford insurance to sue. But then someone Poor would basically lose the ability to sue if they could find an insurer at a costs they can afford. Anyone can find a cheap lawyer to represent them like legal aid but they couldn’t afford to post collateral or pay an insurance premium to sue.
Instead of throwing heat and assuming your right maybe you haven’t fully thought this out.
The second link in the post. The sentence "I think it's generally well known that lawsuits are often a tool used to bully people ..." links to https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/greater-justice-lower-cost-how-loser-pays-rule-would-improve-american-legal-system-5891.html
You mentioned multiple hypotheticals; I responded to one. I even quoted it.
Now you're just projecting. I think you just posted the first objection that came to mind without considering any ways it could be overcome? What do you think happens in the countries where this is the rule, and someone tries what you suggested? Do you have any idea, or did you just assume there is no solution? Do you think everyone in every other country is so stupid that they've never thought of it before?
Your comment reminds me of this xkcd--playing tricks with fake companies is something that you can already do. Sometimes it gets around the law and sometimes it doesn't, but it's not like suing any company is currently pointless because they all have 0 assets and are actually owned by Cayman Island shell companies. If it were trivial to set up fake companies for legal purposes, why don't companies currently all do that?
They do. It sometimes even backfires on them when they try to shift business assets from one sub-entity to another, and I have to tell them that some municipal permit they rely upon to keep running their business is nontransferrable (e.g., some tobacco retailer licenses, entertainment permits, game-machine tags, or other, equally-obscure approvals)
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You never addressed any my points in detail. Sure caps on recoverable fees - which I myself said was a solution - but the actual cap matters. Low and it’s meaningless. High and it makes it too risky to challenge 50-50 cases for many litigants.
Companies DO set up different entities to carve out risks. It’s not hard. What’s your solution?
“double the cost in Germany and more than three times the cost in France or the United Kingdom.”
There lead isn’t even that promising. These countries have lower gdp per capita. So a lot of this is just those countries being poorer. About 70% of US gdp. After adjusting for this Germany 1.4 x US and UK/France are 2. Also have socialized medicine and I believe limits on damages which no doubt accounts for a lot of the differences. So where’s the benefit you haven’t even proven
there systems are cheaper (unless you ban medical damages).
How much of the rest can be solved by just limiting damages like say the $1 billion assigned to Alex Jones.
Also an argument that is rest of the world does things in way X and US does things Y is on its face a bad argument. We are massively wealthier than those countries. Shouldn’t they consider in business doing things our way on most things.
Which isn't real anyway, because he doesn't have $1bn to pay. Getting a judgment is one thing; getting actual recovery is another.
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Your points prove too much, namely that any such system should instantly become full of shell companies filing free lawsuits against their competitors. Every other country's legal system has not immediately become overwhelmed by these 0-risk lawsuits, so clearly there is something you're missing. I'm not going to address every one of infinitely many hypothetical situations. TBH, these sorts of schemes seem like they have plenty of trivial solutions which you can probably come up with if you gave it an honest thought, rather than just deciding this idea is bad and then writing any argument that supports one side.
Obviously no system is perfect, but we know for a fact that the American system is very abusable so simply saying "the other system might have this hypothetical problem" isn't convincing.
You can't just take random numbers and multiply them together. The ratio given was already a percent of GDP, so why is this a valid comparison?
Your post has a lot of spelling and grammar errors throughout, most of which I can still parse, but this paragraph isn't even comprehensible.
Fair I missed the percent of gdp.
But again you are failing to address ANY point I am making. You just claim their are solutions. To me this indicates a poorly thought out position. And just an opinion that this sounds good without having any detailed understanding of your position.
No, what's poorly thought out is taking the very first hypothetical you thought of and treating it as a knock-down argument against a system that has been implemented in dozens of countries. You didn't even read the link I first posted, and you didn't even clearly read it a second time, and in both cases doing so would have addressed one of your points (I notice that you're no longer harping on filing a lawsuit being an existential risk for a smaller company, because the larger one can waste money on their defense, but never acknowledged it was trivial to solve).
I've dealt with this sort of argument before: There are nearly limitless hypothetical situations one could raise. This is common in anti-libertarian arguments, too: Chain together enough silly assumptions and you can make anything look bad. However, no effort is every put into demonstrating they are actual problems, or that these problems outweigh the problems of the alternative, etc. For example:
"What if, in each side pays, I set up a bunch of shell companies who each file frivolous lawsuits against some company just because I don't like their mascot's appearance. Filing such a lawsuit is much cheaper than defending it, and the courts can't label my shell companies as vexatious litigants because each one is new. Therefore, each side pays is not practical because anyone can instantly bankrupt anyone they don't like at any time."
I demand that you respond in detail to this hypothetical before I consider your system plausible.
The problem is your not specifically answering the solutions with details.
Also I never dropped the idea that caps on expenses could bankrupt the smaller company. That depends a lot on the magnitude of the caps. If it’s low then it doesn’t prevent lawsuits but also doesn’t solve any issues.
For your question specifically it’s because it costs money to set up shell companies and file a lot of lawsuits. And no one wants to spend a ton of money because they don’t like a mascot.
This is just verbally jarring because your failing to come up with specific details to address.
My opinion is that “loser pays” isn’t the key reason why we have high costs. And other reforms like caps on excessive judgements, more arbitration, less checks/balances, etc would fix the issue. Your starting with some big top level policy when the solutions are much more lower level details regardless of whether you run “loser pays” or our system.
This actual reminds me a lot of Georgism which thinks a big top level LVT would solve housing. But it’s actually lower level administrative things like zoning, number of checks/balances, etc that solve the issue.
I’ve also never said one hypothetical disproved it but you also haven’t presented detailed solutions. It’s your idea so your the one who needs to present the details.
Ironically, you didn't respond to my argument with any details, you just repeated your own belief.
It's not really "my idea" as it's used in dozens of countries. If you think it's completely unusable then the burden of proof is on you.
Here's one example. This is the only time I'm going to do this, because otherwise this comment chain could just grow until we've recreated all of the law system of a developed country.
The use of shell companies is, as another commenter pointed out, already common everywhere. This does cause problems sometimes, but is not something that makes the whole system unusable. In this case of "make a shell company just to file a lawsuit" one option is to require someone filing a lawsuit to have assets or insurance. You dismissed this option above then poor people couldn't sue, but A) insurance could still be very cheap for a lawsuit that is likely to succeed; B) filing a lawsuit already has costs; and C) we already have lawyers who work on contingency, who would probably have little issue also fronting the cost of insurance for legitimate suits.
There are other options as well. A country could require a more substantial entity located in their borders to file a lawsuit, such as an actual person who owns the company or can attest to its legitimacy, and is willing to take responsibility for the costs of losing a lawsuit. As above, this entity would need to have assets or insurance. Courts already deal with location-based jurisdiction questions, companies and individuals trying to hide assets, etc; while I'm sure there are questions that would need be resolved by legislatures and/or courts, they don't prevent the system from working at all.
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Can you address /u/what_a_maroon ‘s argument, who points out that almost every single country other than US has loser-pays rule? If it works for them, why wouldn’t it work here?
He asked him to prove an affirmative claim.
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Do we know it works everywhere else? I don't know what the litigation environment in other countries is like, but expecting we should all accept that "everyone else does it differently" means "everyone else does it better" is a stretch. Do you think perhaps people in those countries might have opinions about how well their system works that are not universally positive?
Also, it's easy to see how an argument like "everyone else does it differently and it works better" would be rejected for issues like health care and gun control, so why shouldn't we assume that the U.S. is sufficiently different with regard to this issue as well?
These are not the same things.
Gun politics: Many people outside US love guns, fight for more expansive gun rights and dream about American style gun freedoms.
The other: No one outside US advocates for American style health care or American style legal system in their country. No one.
But that’s not really a fair comparison. Our legal system isn’t about improving the legal system necessarily but trying to improve transacting or liability. Yes, lawsuits might be expensive but that doesn’t mean the legal system has failed.
So looking at just the input cost (the direct cost of a legal system) doesn’t mean the output (what Bastiat might call the unseen) isn’t worth it.
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I've read Canadian mainstream newspapers favorably comparing the American system (pre-Obamacare) to the Canadian.
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He never addressed my points I can’t argue with a ghost.
Also an argument that is “rest of world does things differently” is a horrible argument. Americas the richer country and the presumption should therefore begin with America does it better . No doubt not always true but by itself everyone else does it differently isn’t a good argument since Americas uniquely rich.
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