It’s been nearly 35 years since then-Vice President Dan Quayle delivered a speech in which he decried the costs of hyper-litigiousness on the American economy. His speech would not require much surgery to make it as relevant today as it was then, nor to spur the same howls of discontent from the American Bar Association. The costs of litigation are baked into the overhead of doing business in America. Virtually no industry or business type is immune to the ravages of the evolving lawsuit machinery, and the only winners are the trial lawyers who feed its ravenous appetite.Among the more pernicious mutations are the advent of third-party litigation funders — including foreign governments seeking a strategic leg up through American courts — and multidistrict litigation, which accounts for roughly 70% of all federal civil actions, a neat twist on the class-action lawsuit model that offers local governments a handy new revenue stream to sidestep budget constraints.
THE $35 BILLION SHADOW OVER AMERICA’S COURTROOMS
Last year, for instance, the City of La Crosse, Wisconsin, filed suit against a handful of fire truck manufacturers, claiming they were conspiring to keep fire truck prices high. Several other municipalities have been convinced to join the suit, likely for one of two reasons: First, a number of those jurisdictions, including La Crosse, Augusta, Maine, and Philadelphia, are facing budget issues and are accordingly chomping at the bit to get their own crack at the $5 million-per-claimant in damages. Second, that number itself is a juicy enticement for the trial lawyers to recruit more claimants.
