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Comment by Causality1 | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered why there's not a federal law requiring that the losing party of a suit is required to pay the winner's legal fees, up to an amount equal to what the losing party itself spent.

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"The rationale for the American rule is that people should not be discouraged from seeking redress for perceived wrongs in court or from trying to extend coverage of the law. The rationale continues that society would suffer if a person was unwilling to pursue a meritorious claim merely because that person would have to pay the defendant's expenses if they lost."

via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney%27s_fe...

Seems like it would have the opposite effect, discouraging everyone but the wealthy from filing claims. 60% of Americans don't have an extra thousand dollars, let alone the means to support real legal representation.

Where I'm from (Scandinavia), we have laws like that. You pay for your and the other sides legal fees.

While you rarely, if ever, see cases where losing parties have to pay millions - I personally haven't seen any like that - you can see people having to pay tens to lower hundred thousand $ in legal fees.

That can be a substantial sum for regular people, and those circumstances happen when the other party has hired in high-$$$ lawyers, and the case goes on for a while. Especially if there's multiple appeals.

So there's always the risk of that.

Seems like that would have the undesirable effect of making large corporations untouchable by anyone except the government and other large corporations.

If you want to sue a big company for treating you poorly, you risk a very high price of you lose.

That’s the point of the American Rule - every side pays their own way.

That only holds if the laws allow the large corporation to treat people unfairly.

Even if the law is fair in 99.9% of the cases, if that 0.1% means you're on the hook for more than you can afford, it's rational not to risk it.

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