>>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 ++++

The problem with such a system is that it gives big companies a huge advantage. If you're the individual harmed by a big company, would you take the risk of suing knowing that they'll bring as many lawyers as it takes to beat you and then you've got to pay for them.

The no-brainer cases, where a company was clearly negligent, would probably be okay under such a system, but those where nuance is part of the picture would never be filed.

I think what we do need is a better way of distinguishing the frivolous lawsuits from the ones where there's a real question of guilt/negligence. I agree that lawyers who regularly file frivolous lawsuits, hoping that companies will just pay up because it's cheaper, should be discouraged and punished. But I sure don't want to make it impossible to go after the big guys.

Tamar