[Apercu]

Why not use the British system - you lose, you pay all court costs including your opponents legal fees. That would seem to prevent many frivolous lawsuits.

[CharacterCounts]

Most states actually have a method of you lose you pay. For example, long before your case even gets a trial date it get evaluated by a panel of three attorneys. This panel puts a dollar number on the case. If both sides accept the evaluation, the case is settled. If, however, one side rejects the evaluation, that side must not only prevail at trial but improve its position by 10% or pay the other sides actual attorney fees and costs. In my county we recently had a case which was evaluated for $100,000. The Plaintiff rejected the evaluation and at trial was awarded exactly $100,000. Because the plaintiff failed to improve its position by 10%, the plaintiff was required to pay about $117,000 in attorney fees and costs for a net loss of $17,000 on a winning case.

I doubt loser pays will do much to change the situation as long as we permit spurious class actions and permit these Plaintiffs to pick their jurisdiction.

[frithguild]

Why not use the British system

There are severla fee shifting statutes here in the states. For example, a prevailing party in a discrimination case. If you have a clearcut case, you will often see a team of lawyers for the Plaintiff turning over every rock. The defense then pays a half a million dollars in shifted attorneys fees and fifty thousand to the victim. Fee shifting just creates different types of abuses.