Corporate America and their political allies are consistently telling the American public that frivolous lawsuits place a huge burden on the economy.
But contrary to what Corporate America wants you to believe, American businesses file four times as many lawsuits as do individuals represented by trial attorneys, and businesses are penalized by judges much more often for filing frivolous lawsuits, according to a report released on Monday by Public Citizen.
The survey of case filings in two states (Arkansas and Mississippi) and two local jurisdictions (Cook County, Ill., and Philadelphia, Pa.) in 2001 found that businesses were 3.3 to 5.8 times more likely to file lawsuits than were individuals. This comes as businesses and politicians are campaigning to limit citizens’ rights to sue over everything from medical malpractice damages to defective products, Public Citizen said in a press release.
The report, “Frequent Filers: Corporate Hypocrisy in Accessing the Courts”, also found that businesses and their attorneys were 69 percent more likely than individuals and their attorneys to be sanctioned by federal judges for filing frivolous claims or defenses.
“Corporations think America is too litigious only when they are on the receiving end of a lawsuit,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. “But when they feel aggrieved, businesses are far more likely to take their beef to court than are consumers.”
Public Citizen also found that federal judges punish businesses far more often than trial attorneys representing individuals in tort claims for tying up the court with frivolous claims or defenses.
INSURANCE INDUSTRY
“Some of the loudest voices for restricting the legal rights of consumers and patients also are the biggest users of the court system,” Public Citizen said. “For example, claiming that it is inundated with class action lawsuits, the insurance industry has led the charge for federal legislation that would restrict the rights of consumers to bring such cases.
“Yet in Cook County, Ill., insurance companies filed about 8,000 lawsuits in 2002 – 35 times the number of class actions filed there by individuals that year,” Public Citizen found. “In fact, insurers file so many suits- mostly ’subrogation’ suits designed to recover the expense of covering their own policy holders – that last year they asked to be exempted from a model lawsuit ‘reform’ law that would limit citizen access to the courts and that they otherwise support.”
Mr. Jackson Williams, Public Citizen attorney who authored the study, said: “We see nothing wrong with anyone, whether an individual or a business, taking a genuine dispute to court when it can’t be resolved amicably. We simply ask that corporations stop demonizing a perfectly good legal system that they regularly utilize.”.
(via Public Citizen)
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