On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 03:49:04PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote: > On Mon, 01 Sep 2003, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > Only in the US. Most countries require the plaintiff actually have a > > case before letting them in the courtroom. > > This isn't really true in the US as well. Frivolous lawsuits in the US > often are thrown out very rapidly in the pre trial phase.[1] Many of the > egregious cases which are thrown out often involve the awarding of > fees and/or damages to the defendant. [...] > 1: Of course, you do hear about rather rediculous judgements from > time to time. That's because there are quite a few moronic lower court > judges out there. Most of those settlements (the Mc-D's coffee one for > instance) are often overturned or reduced in the appeals process. I think this has something to do with our perverse habit of making state judges *elected* officials. This does a lot to discourage professionalism among judges. (Not every state does this, and this does not occur in the federal courts.) -- G. Branden Robinson | A committee is a life form with six Debian GNU/Linux | or more legs and no brain. branden@debian.org | -- Robert Heinlein http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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