The prospect of striking it rich, often with very little effort, by filing frivolous lawsuits to gain multi-million dollar fees motivates some plaintiffs’ attorney to assault one company after another with little or no regard for the merits of the claims.  (Comments by the editor.)

Frivolous claims allege some type of harm when in fact little or none has occurred. They require minimal time, effort and expense to file, yet hold out the possibility of significant rewards, a substantial portion of which will be paid to the plaintiffs’ lawyers. Although frivolous claims have no real basis in fact or law, defendants often settle them – a kind of “legal extortion” – because it costs less to settle these claims than to defend them. (KRC:  Schwartz, “Why the Lawsuit Reduction Act …”)

“The threat of a lawsuit and the related media damage can present a no-win situation for companies: either settle a false claim to end the bad publicity or fight on the facts but get tarnished in public anyway. Often the damage to a company's reputation and sales exceeds the legal risk it wants to avoid”.  (KRC:  Hantler, “Minimizing the Damage from Lawsuits, PRWeek”,  June 27, 2005)

In 1999, the court ruled that those who may have been exposed to a dangerous substance can get a cash award even if they have no symptoms of illness.  (Bower v. Westinghouse, 522 S.E. 2d 424 (W. Va. 1999))

Yet West Virginia’s speculative law allows thousands of plaintiffs to sue for future injuries and receive awards that can then be used to buy cars, vacation getaways or anything else they choose.  A $381 million verdict including medical monitoring claims against DuPont is currently on appeal to the state’s high court.  (KRC: JH, Judicial Hellholes 2008/2009, page 3)

Summing up: Patron drank before going to the restaurant, likely driving drunk to get there; the restaurant did not sell alcohol to the driver. So, why is the restaurant subject to liability for the drunk driving accident? What does this say for the notion of personal responsibility in some areas of New Jersey?  (Assoc. Press, Court Expands Bar Owners’ Responsibility, The Record (N.J.), Mar. 20, 2008, at http://www.northjersey.com/business/news/Court_expands_bar_owners_responsibility.html.)

Reason for optimism, however, may be found in a recent ruling of the Texas Supreme Court that should stop personal injury lawyers from importing claims from all over the country to friendly Texas courts. On December 5, 2008, the state’s high court ruled in In re General Electric Co. that the plaintiff, who had lived and worked in Maine all of his life, could not sue for his asbestos exposure in Harris County, which handles Texas’s asbestos litigation.  (KRC: JH, Watch List, page 21)