Robert M. Gary opined

On Mar 5, 12:58 pm, "Darkwing" theducksmail"AT"yahoo.com wrote:
If the plaintiff in a lawsuit had to pay for the defendants legal bills if
the plaintiff loses (like in Europe) most of this frivolous suing BS would
go away. Well I'm off to pour hot coffee all over my crotch.

Actually, if you want real legal reform all you would need to is to
cause punitive damages to go to someone/something other than the
claimant. The legal system makes the person whole through actual
damages (pain and suffering, lose of income, expenses, etc). Giving
punitive damages to this person never made any sense to me at all.
Allow attorneys to still collect a percentage of the punitive but the
rest should go somewhere else (even to the bottom of the ocean would
be better).

But who?

If punitive awards go to the state, it would become a revenue source. How long
would it take for every trial end up with punitive damages?

Giving the money to charities would be better, but I suspect that there would
still be problems.

Better to just ban punitive damages.



-ash
Cthulhu in 2007!
Why wait for nature?