Unregistered MudRun participant sues when paralyzed

Cure worse than the disease wrote:

Mr. Obvious wrote:The only way I can think of to limit suits like this more is to allow defendants to sue for fees and hold not just the plaintiff but the plaintiff's attorney responsible for these fees.

That sounds like a good way of closing the courthouse to anyone but the rich, large corporations, and insurance companies. No lawyer would take a case for a plaintiff where there was any risk of losing because losing a single case would bankrupt the lawyer.

You raise an interesting point. There was talk of instituting a British civil judicial system = loser pays all court costs. That really cuts down on frivilous suits.

Opposed = the American Bar Assn. ABA.

Cure worse than the disease wrote:

That sounds like a good way of closing the courthouse to anyone but the rich, large corporations, and insurance companies. No lawyer would take a case for a plaintiff where there was any risk of losing because losing a single case would bankrupt the lawyer.

If it was a loser pays system, your concern would be balanced by defendants having an even greater incentive to settle out of court. No trial means no loser means no paying the other side's fees unless it's agreed to in the settlement.

There ought to be a cap on how much the plaintiff's attorneys can get from a judgment/settlement, or a regressive contingency fee model where the lawyer collects a smaller percentage from the second million than the first. Right now we have a system where somebody gets a windfall because something bad happened to somebody else.

Cure worse than the disease wrote:

That sounds like a good way of closing the courthouse to anyone but the rich, large corporations, and insurance companies. No lawyer would take a case for a plaintiff where there was any risk of losing because losing a single case would bankrupt the lawyer.

Yes there are problems any way you try to change the system.

The other way to change the system is to get juries to quit awarding huge sums of money in these sorts of cases. If such suits did not have a reasonable chance of success then attorneys would not bring them. Unfortunately I think in a lot of these cases juries see an injured, sympathetic plaintiff on one side and a large corporation or a large insurance company on the other side and give awards outside of the merits of the case. I don't know how to fix basic human emotions, though.

Cure worse than the disease wrote:

Mr. Obvious wrote:The only way I can think of to limit suits like this more is to allow defendants to sue for fees and hold not just the plaintiff but the plaintiff's attorney responsible for these fees.

That sounds like a good way of closing the courthouse to anyone but the rich, large corporations, and insurance companies. No lawyer would take a case for a plaintiff where there was any risk of losing because losing a single case would bankrupt the lawyer.

I thought about that, but I decided that lawyers still need to get paid, and rather enjoy it. So they would still take cases. Presumably, not all losses would result in fines to the plaintiff's attorneys, just in cases where a judge or jury determined those attorneys overzealously pushed for a crap lawsuit just out of profiteering. In some cases those judges/juries would make questionable decisions, and law firms would absorb those as a cost of doing business, just as heart surgeons still show up for work and do heart surgeries, even though they sometimes are found liable of malpractice, and sometimes those findings are flawed.

Little "Mom and Pop" law firms might suffer, I'll grant you.

And who knows ... you may be right, and maybe when my neighbor doesn't de-ice their sidewalk like they were supposed to, and I slip and fall, I just hae to deal with it. But I'm not sure that's so bad.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

Yes there are problems any way you try to change the system.

A great and often overlooked point. "Why not try the option with no conceivable negative side-effects" is not something you commonly get to do.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

The other way to change the system is to get juries to quit awarding huge sums of money in these sorts of cases. If such suits did not have a reasonable chance of success then attorneys would not bring them. Unfortunately I think in a lot of these cases juries see an injured, sympathetic plaintiff on one side and a large corporation or a large insurance company on the other side and give awards outside of the merits of the case. I don't know how to fix basic human emotions, though.

Yep. I used to imagine if juries were instructed to consider "How much would it take?" for them to endure whatever bad thing that happened. Barrista accidentally throw hot coffee in your face? Ok ... how much would you charge someone to throw hot coffee in your face? $100? $5,000? Maybe $1,500. Ok, $1,500 + $4,500 in punitive damages. [Gavel.]

beantaxi wrote:

garland823 wrote:

My favorite part is his lawyer calls him fit because he ran a 5k at 9:49 pace.

My favorite part, is when I read the 5K pace part I immediately wondered "How long until some LRC jackass belittles the guy's 5K pace", and it happened in the very first reply. From the OP hisself. Great stuff.

This is where bad reporting comes in. It's his dad that ran in the 50-59 age group, not him.

You have no idea how much work it takes to bring a case like this to trial.

lionel hutz wrote:

You have no idea how much work it takes to bring a case like this to trial.

I'm not sure what I said that could possibly have given you that idea.

Nervous Nelly wrote:

There was talk of instituting a British civil judicial system = loser pays all court costs. That really cuts down on frivilous suits.

The other thing that cuts down on frivolous law suits is the relatively low amounts awarded in UK settlements.

My Mother was very badly injured on a cruise once and my Dad settled for free tickets for the next cruise. They weren't even first-class.

This guy wasn't a serious runner.

If he was, he'd have done a controlled workout after his race.