People should be encouraged to use the courts. It's a good thing that people use the court system to resolve their disputes. At least they're not dueling in the streets - or worse, leaving their disputes unresolved and suffering without any way to resolve them. Court systems are how modern societies resolve their disputes.
I think the US court system is - on average - fair to the parties involved. One example: The US doesn't award legal fees to the winner, because then everyone would immediately hire the most expensive lawyer to get a higher chance of winning. This would raise the stakes of any lawsuit, and make people far more scared to go to court. This means people might genuinely be suffering from some issue that they can't get resolved.
There's a legitimate issue where companies are afraid of losing millions on legal fees from one of their millions of customers that paid $20 for a cable and got shocked or hurt. Maybe the product was genuinely flawed or the company genuinely treated the customer poorly. Maybe the company is in the right but the customer feels slighted and wants their righteous indignation, or is just greedy for a payout.
For smaller claims, there is small-claims court which is supposed to handle this at much lower cost.
For larger claims: Well, the stakes are intrinsically higher, so maybe it makes sense for the legal system to be expensive.
But for mid-claims - claims too large for small claims court and too small to spend millions on a legal campaign - maybe there is room for improvement. And maybe that room involves arbitration companies. If two parties of equal power consent to using them to save money on a $100,000 contract, that seems okay to me.
But if a million dogs get shocked to death by defective dog collars, it seems wrong that people couldn't use the court system to get resolution. Maybe it's a bad example - but companies engaging in some trouble worth tens of millions of dollars should end up in court. Society doing this is a good thing, even for the companies involved - although they might not feel like it at the time.
When you hear about some large corporation getting off the hook with what seems to be a slap-on-the-wrist million dollar fine, it's almost a good thing: it means you can use the court system to sue large companies to resolve disputes and get them to change their behavior without burdening everyone with a draconian court system.
I say arbitration should either always be appealable to a real court, or we should set up a new cheaper court system that reviews the evidence and makes a preliminary opinion but doesn't set precedent and can be appealed.
>There's a genuine issue where companies are afraid of losing millions on legal fees from one of their millions of customers that paid $20 for a cable and got shocked or hurt.
That's a feature not a bug. That paranoia has probably saved many tens of thousands of lives, maybe more.
The US doesn't award legal fees to the winner, because then everyone would immediately hire the most expensive lawyer to get a higher chance of winning.
Not in Germany.
If you pay your lawyer more than the normal amount (as provided by a special law) you aren't reimbursed for that. Only the normal amount.
I think the US court system is - on average - fair to the parties involved. One example: The US doesn't award legal fees to the winner, because then everyone would immediately hire the most expensive lawyer to get a higher chance of winning. This would raise the stakes of any lawsuit, and make people far more scared to go to court. This means people might genuinely be suffering from some issue that they can't get resolved.
There's a legitimate issue where companies are afraid of losing millions on legal fees from one of their millions of customers that paid $20 for a cable and got shocked or hurt. Maybe the product was genuinely flawed or the company genuinely treated the customer poorly. Maybe the company is in the right but the customer feels slighted and wants their righteous indignation, or is just greedy for a payout.
For smaller claims, there is small-claims court which is supposed to handle this at much lower cost.
For larger claims: Well, the stakes are intrinsically higher, so maybe it makes sense for the legal system to be expensive.
But for mid-claims - claims too large for small claims court and too small to spend millions on a legal campaign - maybe there is room for improvement. And maybe that room involves arbitration companies. If two parties of equal power consent to using them to save money on a $100,000 contract, that seems okay to me.
But if a million dogs get shocked to death by defective dog collars, it seems wrong that people couldn't use the court system to get resolution. Maybe it's a bad example - but companies engaging in some trouble worth tens of millions of dollars should end up in court. Society doing this is a good thing, even for the companies involved - although they might not feel like it at the time.
When you hear about some large corporation getting off the hook with what seems to be a slap-on-the-wrist million dollar fine, it's almost a good thing: it means you can use the court system to sue large companies to resolve disputes and get them to change their behavior without burdening everyone with a draconian court system.
I say arbitration should either always be appealable to a real court, or we should set up a new cheaper court system that reviews the evidence and makes a preliminary opinion but doesn't set precedent and can be appealed.