If you live in the United States of America for any number of years you may recall how many times you have heard someone say sue him or her for everything that they own or got. Or you may have heard the saying that I'm going to sue your pants off and I will own everything you have. Lawsuits in America are almost like an American pastime because of the way they are being used to attain money.
With all of these lawsuits being flied some valid and others lawsuits are frivolous being filed, people are suing for anything, such as tripping and falling on the sidewalk or for someone staring at them too long, or because someone said something to them that they did not like, all of these filings has made our society jaded to the word lawsuit.
Lawsuits have become so common, that when people hear someone talking about suing someone, most people will smirk and say here we go again someone trying to sue someone, trying to get an easy payday, getting money for nothing.
Lawsuits are plaintiffs suing the defendants for damages caused to them, because of the defendant's possible neglect. The plaintiff the party brings the lawsuit is saying that they suffered a loss because the defendant did something or was the responsible party for the action that causes them a loss.
Purpose of Lawsuits:
Lawsuits provide opportunities for individuals to be compensated for a wrongdoing or neglectful act of a person or business or corporation. Lawsuits are there to make you whole or try to get you back as close possible as you were before you suffered the loss that you sustained. Lawsuits should not be used to get even with someone or as a vendetta. That is not the purpose for lawsuits. Sometimes the courts have made decisions to punish (defendant(s) someone or business or corporation as far as damages are a concern. If a (defendant(s) person or business or corporation has shown disdain for people's welfare the courts can or will punish them heavily monetarily and sometimes can include jail time.
Costs of lawsuits:
Lawsuits costs a lot of money:
There are so many lawsuits being filed against people, and business, so often that these lawsuits filing are causing our courts' systems a heavy burden trying to sift through each one to determine if the lawsuit is worthy or valid or just plain frivolous. Filing these lawsuits causes our courts to use a lot of man-hours, for judges, attorneys, clerks, duties sheriffs, lights, water and tons of paper. Then they have to have a place or location to hold the proceedings or hearings and if do not have a place to hold the proceedings there will be a delay in the case, costing the taxpayers more money.
These frivolous lawsuits cause the courts to waste a lot of time, energy and money, that could be used handling valid lawsuits or defending something that really needs the courts' attention, time and energy. With so many frivolous lawsuits being file they create a backlog and the cases get pushed back for many months and a majority of these cases could have been settled and the backlog could be alleviated some.
To try to settle some of these cases and to unclogged backlogged cases judges will at times try to get the parties involved in lawsuits to settle their lawsuits out of court to save the taxpayer tons of money in court costs. This goes both for civil or criminal court proceedings as well.
To get our society to respect the legal process about filing lawsuits there needs to be more education about what is considered a worthy or valid and what the courts consider frivolous lawsuits. Educating the public about lawsuits could save the taxpayers a lot of money that our system needs in other places. Educating the public about lawsuits is not discouraging individuals rights to file a lawsuit when a injustice has been committed, but it gives the public a better understanding of the legal and court process.
