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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5675 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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Did anything change in the last 150 years in tort law that caused the risk of being sued to increase? Did the supply of lawyers increase and the cost to access a lawyer decrease? What are the incentives that have made us like this?

There's been a massive increase in the use of strict liability (no mens rea requirement), novus actus interveniens is pretty much dead (and is dead when it comes to kids), the eggshell skull doctrine has been expanded beyond all reason, and even being sued is a life-ruining experience for an individual, even if the case is frivolous.

Is this a decision someone made and can theoretically be unmade by a governing body? Like someone takes a case to the Supreme Court, or a law in Congress gets passed? Or is this just incentives finding a local minimum?

Juries will insert an arbitrary amount of zeros on the "damages" line of a verdict if the victim is sympathetic enough. The Supreme Court tried to tame the madness back in the 2000s, but in the absense of a bright-line standard lower courts (and especially state courts) continued to impose insane judgements. Philip Morris USA Inc. v. Williams is a good example of this.

It is not one decision, it is many, made by legislators, judges, and bureaucrats. Most people prefer it this way and would be horrified at the suggestion that it be changed, so even if it could be undone, there's no constituency for it. There's a word for someone who opposes this kind of thing and acts on their opposition, and that word is "tortfeasor" (except where criminal law applies, in which case it is "criminal").

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