Yes

3 of 10

by Joseph Whalen

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It is an undeniable fact that the United States is an overly litigious society. This is the result of a legal system that does little to discourage frivolous lawsuits, combined with an overwhelming sense of entitlement and lack of responsibility that the current culture in the country has developed. As a result of this caustic combination, our court systems are filled with lawsuits for these most insignificant issues and our daytime television programming is replete with judge shows, while evening television is dominated by court dramas.

In other 'civilized' countries such as England for instance, when a plaintiff brings suite against a defendant and loses, it is the plaintiff who is responsible for covering all legal fees and court fees, including the defendants. This fair and equitable application of the law helps to prohibit people from bringing frivolous lawsuits against others, which they ultimately hope to plead out without seeing the case come to fruition, just as a means of a quick and easy pay day.

Unfortunately this is not the case in the United States. Anyone can sue or be sued, often costing the defendant thousands of dollars in legal fees for a claim that may be utterly false and fictitious. All too often law suits are brought against people for vindictive reasons where even if the plaintiff loses the case, they've successfully cost the defendant time and money.

Legislative changes that govern how law suits are handled are unlikely to occur any time in the near future for one very clear and obvious reason, money. Lawyers simply make too much money on these lawsuits to allow any change in the legal system to discourage them. Given the fact that almost all politicians are lawyers, compounded by the fact that lawyers make up a disproportionate amount of the lobbying population, there is little incentive to pass legislation regulating lawsuits as we've seen in other countries.

In addition to the legal hurdles surrounding non-relevant lawsuits, we have the American public and its sense of entitlement and lack of responsibility fueling the fires as well. Most Americans seem to expect some type of huge payout at some point in their lives. Whether this pay out comes in the form of their proverbial fifteen minutes of fame in today's media rich environment or simply the old slip and fall lawsuit at their local department store, matters little to those looking for the hand out. Because it is so easy to fabricate a situation in which a large corporation such as a retail outlet can be made to look negligent resulting in personal injury, there will always be people who take advantage of the legal system.

Compound the desire for payout with the overall lack of personal responsibility in society and you have a dangerous mix of circumstances that almost beg to be called together into a lawsuit. Regardless of what personal actions or decisions people seem to make, any misfortune that results from those choices is invariably someone else's fault. Or at least this is what the overall mentality of society seems to be.

We are always quick to point to someone else when life does not take the course we hope or expect it to. Therefore the logical conclusion, once we can justify blaming someone else for our misfortune, is to seek redemption from that person or organization. Given the ease with which we can resort to it, the legal system in the United States is ultimately the first choice in the arsenal of weapons to get back at those who wronged us.

With an ever increasingly complex legal system, and attitude of entitlement and a desire to shirk all personal responsibility, the United States has gone out of its way to breed the overly litigious society we now are downing in. It is a plague on our country that is sapping necessary resources away from the economy and burdening our court systems to the point of collapse. Something must be done to prevent the further deterioration of our society at the hands of money grubbing lawyers, whose first priority is to find a client that can land them a fair percentage of an impressive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

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