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Comment by snitko | Hacker News Reader

I think it's not the worst idea in the world to hold people accountable for what they say. On the other hand, the legal system in most of these cases seems to serve not for the better purpose. It basically ruins people's lives and makes them spend their money to defend themselves in courts over accusations that may not pass the common sense check. Not good for economy.

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It would be an interesting experiment if a blogger adds a small disclaimer: "This is a work of fiction &| gossip" to his "libelous, slanderous" "claims"... Or put every adjective in "quotes" with "some say" at the beginning. This would confuse the lawsuits even further.

Adding "may or may not" to every sentence would also be a good idea.

Most public figures already do something like this when speaking or writing. "Allegedly", is pretty much becoming a salt term for every verb and is well on its way to joining the "most used words in english" right after "the" and "a".

Ianal, but isn't there some system in place to prevent really ridiculous cases going to court? E.g. grand juries or something?

> Ianal, but isn't there some system in place to prevent really ridiculous cases going to court? E.g. grand juries or something?

Grand juries are "court", albeit with a lesser burden of proof, and they don't apply to civil cases anyway.

There's a preliminary stage, where each party moves for summary judgement in their favor, but even that can get involved. (Google is involved in an age-discrimination lawsuit where the parties are fighting over whether they even go to trial. That decision went to the CA Supreme Court, took years, and cost lots of money. Yes, it's an outlier but....)

The preliminary stage tends to weed out the truly absurd but remember you're only hearing one side here.

The media might make them seem like they do not pass the common sense check, but judges are people of many years of real life experience and the system of precedents manages to make the law fairly clear.

Also, if a claim is trivial, or pursued regardless of its merits, the claimant might be made to pay punitative damages.

As for the economy, I think it would serve it well if my reputation can be kept intact and not damaged for no reason.

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