[clintonh8r]

Lawyers will be a lot less likely to take a weak case if they know there may not be a pot of gold at the end of the case. They're likely to lose their expenses as well as their fees if they know their client doesn't have the capacity to pay after a negative verdict. What's wrong with that? Is it worse than the system we have now? Maybe we should just let the trial lawyers continue to run rampant and abuse the system. They aren't just destroying our tort system, they're rapidly eroding the financial viability of our (barely) free market health care system.

[templar]

Lawyers will be a lot less likely to take a weak case if they know there may not be a pot of gold at the end of the case. They're likely to lose their expenses as well as their fees if they know their client doesn't have the capacity to pay after a negative verdict. What's wrong with that?

Nothing's wrong with that. That is the system we have now. Losing a weak case with no pot of gold produces no contingency fees now, does it? And the lawyer is just as likely to lose his expenses on contingency now as in a loser pays system. What I'm saying, is that where will be no difference, except that you and I, as working people, will no longer have access to the sytem without a large amount of cash up front to guarantee payment of fees in the event of losing. To both your attorney and the opposing attorney.

Remember that a loser pays system wouldn't prohibit, for instance, a judgment against McDonalds for a billion dollares for making people fat. Just that Mcdonalds would have to pay the plaintiffs legal fees as well as their own and that the lawyers would be guaranteed both a percentage of the judgment and actual legal fees as well. The indigent or poor plaintiff would pay nothing, just as he does now.

The solution, if any, lies in the regulation of lawyers through ethical codes and legal fee caps, not loser pays. An attorney would be unlikly to take a weak case and risk losing money if he knew that he would be limited to reasonable legal fees and not 30% or so of millions of dollars in judgment. This would leave the poor and indigent out of the system, though. It wouldn't solve the legal systems problems.