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I've always had an idea that whoever loses a civil suit pays the other party the lower of the legal costs of both parties. So if small company A fights big company B, small company A would only have to pay twice it's legal costs, even if megacorp decides to spend smallcorp's yearly sales in the defense. If megacorp sues a small company, then small company can decide to fight it if they think they have a case and have enough reserves (which are easy to estimate since they will be based on 2xs your legal costs if you lose, 0 if you win).


That seems like a good idea and I can't come up with any obvious way in which it can be exploited.


Yes, your idea is even better than what we have in Poland. In Poland we basically have "loser pays" but the legal costs returned by the loser are limited by law and typically depend on the type of the case and the amount of money requested in the lawsuit. These limits are lower than the typical cost of good legal companies. Therefore even if a big company with expensive lawyers wins, it will not get back all of its legal costs.




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