Re: Lawyers Seeking "Deep Pockets" May Target CCU

[Dave Faneuf <tklaundry@juno.com>]

On Sun, 2 Mar 2003 16:54:38 -0500 (EST) Garrett Wollman
<wollman@lcs.mit.edu> writes:
> <<On Sat, 1 Mar 2003 15:06:26 -0500, "Dan Billings" 
> <billings@suscom-maine.net> said:
> 
> > they shouldn't have any liability.  You can sue anyone, but 
> proving
> > liability is another matter.
> 
> But there's no need to prove liability; all you need to show (as a
> plaintiff) is enough to avoid summary judgment, and then drag out 
> the
> discovery long enough that the defendant decides to settle rather 
> than
> let the suit continue to fester.  The plaintiffs get less money than
> they originally ask for, the defendant gets to deny responsibility
> while avoiding the cost and uncertainty of a drawn-out legal battle.
> 
> -GAWollman

As someone who recently had an opportunity to consider bringing suit
against someone there is something that a potential plantiff needs to
consider.  I have no doubt that I would have won my case, but when I
crunched the numbers it was not cost effective to bring suit.  Even
though the law says I could sue for treble damages the likelyhood of them

1. being awarded and 
2. me ever seeing a dime of them even if they were awarded were pretty
slim.  
So I had to weigh the cost of litigation, dragged out over several years,
vs the real return and the numbers didn't work.   So, I tend to chuckle
when people jump to litigate things, it would be interesting to me to see
how many of these successful litigations actually result in full payments
being made to the planitff (taking into account legal fees)
df