Quote:
Originally Posted by Hermano Dyvas
At the risk of pissing a lot of people off here, the laws regarding sueing someone are ridiculous in the US. You can literally charge anyone for anything, anyone remember that Spin City episode where Paul gets sued for getting shot in the head? As I understand you could actually do that over there. It's insane.
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That's the unfortunate truth. You CAN sue anybody for anything in the United States. Though the case can be thrown out by a judge early on if it is deemed transparently frivilous or ridiculous, it still has to go through a certain amount of due process and beurocracy which still costs quite a bit of money. So someone can sue you for anything they want no matter how insane and you still have to spend your own money defending yourself with legal representation.
You can, of course, counter sue and try and reclaim your losses, but that also costs money and there's no guarantee you'll win and get what you spent back, so you could wind up even deeper in the hole.
It's not a pleasant system.
I wish the US could adopt Britain's "loser pays" system; the loser of any given lawsuit is financially responsible for ALL legal fees, including themselves and the winner. It helps to discourage a LOT of frivilous and ridiculous suits from ever being filed, though on the downside, it also discourages many sincere suits from being filed againt large corporate entities as plaintiffs fear they could get stiffed with a bankruptingly huge legal bill if they lose their suit.
Still, it's a more ideal system than the insanity we have here in the US.