>If you do choose to sue and lose, the judge will routinely load a good chunk of the other party's legal costs onto you. This tends to reduce frivolous cases.

We need this in the USA sooooo bad. I think two things would greatly reduce the insane number of frivolous lawsuits here.
1) If you sue and loose - then you pay the other person for all their legal fees ++++
2) If you're a lawyer and file a stupid frivolous case - you get disbarred - forever.

I know someone that did some computer work for one of the larger grocery store chains and one of the things it did was track all the dumbass lawsuits they had. For example - they had a few cactus plants for sale and someone sued them for several thousand dollars because they poked their finger on the plant - and the plant didn't have a warning sign on it like "don't touch". Naturally the store just paid off the creep rather than goto the expense of fighting the lawsuit. Now the lawyer who filed this bogus lawsuit for the creep probably made around 40% of whatever they settled for....and thus part of the problem. You get a looser who wants to find a way to scam someone and a dirtbag lawyer helping them...well you see the results.