Legal Question in Constitutional Law in North Carolina

Re: Frivolous Cases

I suppose first you would have to define by what you mean as frivolous. Some people believe the "McDonalds' Coffee Case" is frivolous. I believe that when a woman suffers third degree burns and experiences life-changing pain and suffering, that is not a frivolous injury. I also think that when a company knows that it serves coffee 20 degrees hotter than anyone else, and knows that it causes 3rd degree burns within 2 seconds of contact, that they have an obligation to warn or be responsible for that conduct.

Defense attorneys would argue that people have an obligation to know that coffee is hot. The issue, is, however, how hot is "hot."

The problem with a broad definition of frivolous is that nearly every defendant thinks the lawsuit they are involved with is frivolous. For example, the doctor sued because he failed to provide proper care for the patient with a pulmonary diagnosis claims she would have died from the pulmonary diagnosis within two years anyway, so why sue him for wrongful death? THe issue is, life is precious, and those two years were HER years, not his.

Frivolity does matter, and perhaps more to the plaintiffs bar than the defense bar. When people sue for emotional pain because they were served chunky peanut butter instead of a creamy peanut butter, I want to scream at them. It demeans every plaintiff when that happens.

Our office represents people who have been seriously injured. In many cases our clients have died because of the mistakes made by the defendants. No one hates a truly frivolous claim more than I do.

The only thing I hate more is when people use those frivolous claims as an excuse to cut back on the rights of my clients, who have been seriously injured, because that is not fair.

Re: Frivolous Cases

OK, I'll chime in. I am a defense lawyer primarily. I agree with the other response. This is a complex issue, and a gray area. One might as well seek opinions on abortions or flag-burning. The truth is that there are valid suits and bogus suits. We have some minimal safeguards against frivolous suits, e.g. the possible imposition of monetary sanctions. In my opinion, on the whole our system works fairly well. There are some egregious cases that get filed, and some that even win. For the most part, however, the system is fairly good. The biggest problem is the press and the unsophisticated public that places too much emphasis on cases like the McDonald's case. (In fact, as the other responder noted, that case was not necessariliy so frivolous.) If you're really interested in this, I'm sure there are some good authorities out there that go beyond the rhetoric we hear on TV and in political campaigns.