So many public institutions and businesses in the US base much of their internal policies and procedures on limiting their liability in how they operate day to day so they don’t get sued.
When you see a no-brainer, obvious disclaimer on a product packaging or advertisement and think to yourself *why does that need to be explicitly stated?* and the answer seems to always be “so some idiot doesn’t sue them.”
Even myself as an individual need to carry hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal liability insurance on my homeowners policy in case somebody sues me.
When people who feel that they’ve been wronged by an employer, or their kid’s school, or by another individual the advice they get online is always “get a lawyer” but how can most people afford to do that?
I know that attorneys can take money from a settlement after it’s been won, but that takes months or even years in court and with the average fee of well over $150.00 per hour for even a consultation with an attorney, how do normal people afford to sue anyone?
I am well aware that individuals seeking damages from big corporations for blatant negligence is one of the quickest ways for health and safety regulations to be reformed, like that poor woman who was burned because McDonald’s was keeping their coffee at near boiling temperatures, I’m not questioning if these lawsuits are legitimate, I’m questioning how they’re even possible?
In: Economics
>I know that attorneys can take money from a settlement after it’s been won, but that takes months or even years in court and with the average fee of well over $150.00 per hour for even a consultation with an attorney, how do normal people afford to sue anyone?
This depends on your definition of “normal” and “afford”.
Consider: does $30,000 sound affordable? Probably not. But that’s the average price of a *used* car right now. 90%+ of households have a car. Clearly, in the general case, a normal person can afford a car.
The thing is that you don’t buy a car the same way you buy groceries. It’s a major expenditure. You don’t do it every week. You don’t do it on a whim. You budget for it – or, if you need it urgently (e.g. previous car breaks down), you have to juggle things to make it fit.
For a “normal” person, lawsuits are the same way. You don’t decide to file a lawsuit the same way you decide to buy a steak. It’s a significant expenditure. It means you’re cutting other things out of your budget. You do it if you decide the benefit is likely to be worth it.
In any given year, the “normal” (median) person is filing zero lawsuits, buying zero cars, buying zero houses, etc.
But just like “buying a car every 5/10/20 years” still adds up on the scale of a population, so too does “filing a lawsuit only under certain circumstances” add up on the scale of a population.
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