Frivolous lawsuits: Job security for lazy defense lawyers?

Writing about the Econo Lodge lawsuit yesterday got me thinking....So many people who think the legal system is "out of control" suggest that frivolous lawsuits are a huge burden on the taxpayers and a drain on the economy--not, apparently, because the plaintiffs ever win any money (they don't), but because the cost of defending the suits is supposedly so oppressive.

I must confess that I'm skeptical. I am not a lawyer, so I could be totally off base here--and am happy to hear from the fray just how far off--but when you have a suit that was, as in the Econo Lodge case, filed in the wrong place against the wrong people for the wrong reason by a guy without a lawyer, with no discovery, no depositions and apparently not even a court appearance, how on earth can that cost a company millions? I know from reading enough of these things in the courthouse that responses to frivolous suits (and a lot of meritorious ones) are boilerplate documents that probably take a paralegal about five minutes to update. If a lawyer charges Econo Lodge more than a couple of hundred dollars to get a case like this dismissed, I gotta think he's just churning.

Comments

[Ted]

Depends on your definition of "frivolous." If "frivolous" is in the hyper-technical legal sense of "deranged pro se complaint", then you are correct that the expense is a few thousand dollars, though incorrect that it can be handled by boilerplate, and "millions" is accurate only in the aggregate sense. (In Szopa v. United States, however, the US DOJ Tax Department says they spend an average of $11,000 in any given frivolous tax protestor appeal (suits at the trial level are presumably more), and they *do* have a comprehensive boilerplate manual for dealing with tax protestors.)

If "frivolous" is in the colloquial sense of "meritless, but there's a small chance you can trick a judge or three in ruling in your favor", then the expense can be in the billions, as Monday's Fifth Circuit Enron decision showed.

And there are those who legitimately use "frivolous" in an even broader sense than that. That potential confusion between the colloquial and technical uses of the term "frivolous" is why I don't like to use the word "frivolous" and aspire to avoid it.

[Ted]

Of course, now that I look at Nieporent's post, he said "thousands," not "millions," so your use of "millions" in reference to this case is a strawman.

[Elliot]

You have obviously never litigated a case against a frivolous pro se litigant. I have. A pro se files a complaint which is totally specious. (In my case, the pro se sued a bank-- one he had never had an account with-- for billions [with a "B"] of dollars, for violating the "international laws of commerce." No one could figure out what his complaint meant.

I made a motion to dismiss. He responded with a 200 page brief, making 50 separate arguments, citing things like the Magna Carta, obsolete Supreme Court cases, non-existent court cases, out-of-state cases, and all sorts of nonsense he had pulled off the "common law" websites on the internet (for one example, take a look at http://www.suijuris.net/forum/ ).

I had to respond to each of the arguments. The judge, mindful of the Supreme Court's admonition that pleadings by pro se litigants cannot be held to the same standards as those by parties represented by counsel, dismissed the complaint but gave the pro se leave to amend. The process repeated itself 2 or 3 times. Eventually, the judge dismissed with prejudice, and the pro se appealed. While I was responding to the appeal, the pro se also filed a new lawsuit in the next county repeating exactly the same claims. And on. And on. In my case, this process repeated itself for over 3 years, even after the court had issued an injunction barring the pro se from filing any more suits. The pro se responded by suing me and the judge for conspiring to violate his civil rights. That suit had to be heard by a different judge. Lather, rinse, repeat...

[Supremacy Claus]

Elliott: How did you enjoy responding to this pro se litigant when he sued you?

That is the way everyone else feels about the vast majority of bogus tort claims filed by you land pirates to destroy our economy for the purpose of land pirate rent seeking.