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Comment by sandstrom | Hacker News Reader

A big difference is loser pays[1]. It exist in almost all western democracies except for the US. Its precise purpose is to deter things like this, because it's unjust.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_f...

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Loser pays in US system too, but only in some cases. Problem is just having a suit filed against you at the federal lest costs at least 40,000 USD and can go many times that, and that is before a judge ever evens looks at it. So it is easy to harass people with lawsuits.

> Problem is just having a suit filed against you at the federal lest costs at least 40,000 USD

For real ? Why ?

Because in my case, before a judge ever looked at my initial filling. I had to put in 10 different motions, to dismiss, to change venue, etc. I didn't HAVE to do that, but it was important if I wanted to win. Then they went ahead and starting gathering evidence, which required half a dozen filing and the time to collect. Plus the whole point of not being able to defend a corporation except by hiring an attorney in that state. Even though the corporation had been shut down for 4 years. But by not defending the corporation, it got a default judgement, which meant that the chance of losing the suit against myself was much greater.

Sounds incredibly weird. Why does defendant has to pay anything?

Or do you mean attorney fees, because going in a court without one would be practically a suicide?

Yes

This seems overly broad. Can you explain where you got this information, or in what context you think it applies? As an attorney with litigation experience, this is extremely puzzling.

All lawsuits are different, and simply being named as a defendant does not trigger any enormous payments beyond a lawyer's retainer. I suppose huge cases can call for such a retainer, but those surely are exceptional.

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