A Lawyer's Dream

[Dr. Who]

In one of those rare moments on here @jet57, you and I agree. We have the civil rules which have a frivolous penalty and most states if not all states have a frivolous conduct statute. If those were enforced, we would have no issues. Unfortunately, they rarely are.

In costs jurisdictions like the UK, Canada and Australia, the costs of litigation are often borne by the loser. If the defendant in an action has reason to believe that the plaintiff would be unable to pay those costs should their suit prove unsuccessful, the defendant can demand security for costs which is usually provided in the form of funds paid into the court, or held in a trust account operated jointly by both the plaintiff's and defendant's lawyers. This tends to discourage frivolous lawsuits.

[Cletus]

Okay, but...

I don't understand how Youtube can automate subtitles but a media outlet can't?

It shouldn't have to.

The Americans with Disabilities Act is nonsense. There is no reason for it.

[Peter1469]

By the way, I rely on the subtitles to augment my hearing loss. I can tell you that some of them, including most of the news reports are almost unreadable. They apparently are computer generated and many many times it will show words that are not at all what is actually being said, sometimes to the point of entirely changing the meaning of the sentence. Fortunately I can hear what is actually being said enough to know, like the Geico commercial sings "taxidermy" when she mean "tax attorney" what is actually being said. Furthermore many times the dialog is edited and while usually the meaning remains the same occasionally it does not.
I don't know if there is legal obligation to CC everything (many commercials are not) but it would be nice if they got it right when they did. The deaf cannot hear words so they can't necessarily "sound out" what is really said. To them written words are written words and have no relation to spoken words.

Would hearing aids work for you? A guy I work with is retired Air Force so Try-Care pays for his hearing aids 100% and they provide the best tech. His are blue tooth so he can sync them with his phone, TV, etc.

[Peter1469]

Many MANY laws are abused frequently, and disabled people have been abused as well. One solution (I wish they'd use in family courts), is fines of legal fees, like back taxes, for people who BRING frivolous lawsuits and waste everybody's time and energy and drag innocent people through the mud. I think that if a concerted effort was made in that direction, and highly publicized, freeloaders and ambulance chasers would get the hint.

The federal system has rules to cover these abuses, although they are not enforced many times.

I have no idea about state and local courts.

[Peter1469]

You know better than anyone, it's cheaper to settle than to litigate even when you're going to win the case eventually.

And the federal courts have a rule for that. In civil cases one side can offer a settlement to the other side and provide a copy under seal to the court. If the other side does not accept the offer, when the case has been decided if the judgement was near the settlement offer the attorney's fees recovered are limited to the date the reasonable settlement offer was rejected.

This incentivizes lawyers to provide their clients accurate legal advise on the actual worth of their claims. The general value of any claim (other than novel claims) are well known and there are legal publications that are lists of those values.

[Peter1469]

It's the 21st century. One would think that there is an app, or some program that the deaf can use to achieve what they are suing for. This is more about serial litigious individuals gaming the system. It happens every day by people who aren't even taking advantage of specific laws like the one mentioned in the OP

More good has come from ADA than bad.

There is abuse in most things. Look at the abuse of our welfare programs and even emergency programs such as hurricane relief programs.

I agree, the good of the ADA outweighs the bad, and we have tools to address the bad - we just have to use them.

[DGUtley]

The more bull$#@! you can sue for, the more money lawyers can stack. Lovely system, letting parasites drain wealth from productive people who contribute to the real economy.

...or the more wrongs you can right, the more people you can help. Not a perfect system. Let me ask you this: Let's say you are driving home from work one night, you have 3 kids, and a beautiful wife/husband (whatever). You make X amount of money to support your family. I am driving at you, having left the bar drunk. I cross the line and kill you - do you think it is parasitic and a draining of wealth to force me to compensate your estate for having killed you? I am defending two of those cases right now.

[John Galt]

I spent $135,000 defending a trademark infringement suit.
2 years later they just dropped it because they knew it was finally going to discovery. They had nothing. It was just a harassment suit.
It costs almost nothing in the US to launch a law suit and they are very expensive to defend. Only lawyers are fans of the US system.

Why hire someone that carries risk of lawsuits when this is the experience with the courts.

One of my clients owned an upscale poker club before the city closed all of them down many years ago. He had a cook who wasn't just a griddle cook, and a few rather beautiful waitresses. As a favor to a friend, he hired a girl as a waitress. Let's just say that she wasn't much to look at.

You guessed it. She was a serial plaintiff, and brought charges against the cook, and the owners for sexual harassment. Ironic, as there were much nicer looking fish in the pond.

My client was furious. He wanted to put her on the witness stand and ask her what makes her think that anyone would even be interested in having sex with her?

His lawyer told him the truth. She's done this before, and he could most definitely fight it and win. It would be much cheaper to just give her $15k and have her go away. The owners chose to do just that. To this day, he's angry about that.

[John Galt]

There is abuse in most things. Look at the abuse of our welfare programs and even emergency programs such as hurricane relief programs.

I agree, the good of the ADA outweighs the bad, and we have tools to address the bad - we just have to use them.

Yep. No matter the system, there are professionals who scour the laws and find the nooks and crannies. Accountants especially.

[Peter1469]

Yep. No matter the system, there are professionals who scour the laws and find the nooks and crannies. Accountants especially.

I would call them white collar crooks with accounting degrees.