16 January 2013
RIDICULOUS: Unnecessary lawsuits are costing the justice system valuable time and money.
By Kate Doak, Staff Writer
Hear about the lawsuit against Bank of America for 1.7 billion trillion dollars? Or how about the case where a company driver received 21 million dollars from Coca Cola despite the fact that he won by committing a crime? These ridiculous cases are not uncommon and most of them are actually brought into court. Lawsuits such as these are a waste of time and money for both the courts and corporations involved. In order to filter out the strange and unreasonable cases, there needs to be a stricter and more developed system of case review so that frivolous cases never reach a courtroom.
A famous example of this is the case of Stella Liebeck v. McDonald’s. The McDonald’s corporation was already in trouble for serving coffee that reaches up to 190 degrees, hot enough to cause third degree burns. Even after almost 700 injury claims, the company continued to serve it at that temperature. Stella Liebeck, a woman of 79 years, ordered a cup of coffee from the restaurant and ended up spilling it on her legs when she tried to add sugar. The results were serious third degree burns and numerous surgeries and skin grafts. What did Liebeck ask of McDonald’s? Simply to pay her medical bills. However, the company insisted that the case be brought to court. This case should have never been brought in front of a formal court. It ended up costing the company much more than what she asked initially and cost Liebeck time and stress that could have (and should have) easily been avoided. If a better system of review was in place a judge could have denied McDonald’s plea for a formal court decision and both parties would have saved time and money.
Cases like this occur all the time and right now, there is not much keeping them from reaching the courts. One would hope that lawyers, typically the first to review a case, would deny such garbage, and that these cases would be reviewed prior to being brought before a judge and jury. Unfortunately, not all lawyers care to deny the unreasonable individuals pushing these cases, so not all of them are stopped before reaching court. Currently, the system does have a way to settle these cases outside the courtroom that includes negotiation, mediation and arbitration. Negotiation, which is simply a face-to-face talk with the other party, is not much of a legal solution. Mediation involves a neutral third party who tries to advise the opponents on reaching a simple agreement in order to avoid going to court. Some courts actually require individuals to go through the mediation process in order to cut the number of cases brought before a judge, but this is not always effective and is not always required. Arbitration is a legal solution to an issue in which the third party makes a legally binding decision on a case. All of these solutions are encouraged, but many unreasonable cases still move forward.
To resolve the issue, all cases should be reviewed and go through the processes previously listed. Only if a decision is not reached through these measures should the case be reviewed by a committee or a judge. Many frivolous cases would be dropped, saving the parties and the courts a lot of time, money and stress.