I really like the suggestion of malandrew yesterday on HN:
This is one of the main reasons I think that all money spent on lawyers should go into an account that both sides get to draw upon equally to pay legal expenses. You simply cannot have a system capable of meting out justice if money can skew "justice" in your favor.
The two questions which immediately come to mind:
1. How to bell the cat (how does one actually get this enacted)?
Easy to imagine how this could be abused. Imagine that I have a brother who's a lawyer. I bring a frivolous lawsuit against Google/Apple/Microsoft/etc. knowing that they'll dump a fair amount of money into the account. My brother bills me for legal services, taking roughly half the money from the account. I lose the lawsuit but my brother and I split the money.
Courts have been relatively wary of dismissing frivolous suits (at least according to some reports) in recent decades (perhaps in response to an overinclination to do so in the past, further disadvantaging disenfranchised groups). A bit of strengthening of frivolous suit protections, and a waiver of the shared fees in this case, might help.
I'll give you another: there are situations in which pro-bono services may be provided to one party in a suit. Often to increase the equity of a situation, but not in all cases. Should the pro-bono provider be on the hook for the opposing parties reciprocal costs, and how should the PB provider's services be valued?
The SCO v. IBM suit is another in which I could see IBM's legal costs (very high, I'm sure, though I've seen no figures or estimates given) but in which SCO being granted pooled fees would be a miscarriage of justice.
No one forced Microsoft to choose expensive lawyers. If they don't want to take your frivolous lawsuit seriously, they're welcome to buy el cheapo legal services.
This is one of the main reasons I think that all money spent on lawyers should go into an account that both sides get to draw upon equally to pay legal expenses. You simply cannot have a system capable of meting out justice if money can skew "justice" in your favor.
The two questions which immediately come to mind:
1. How to bell the cat (how does one actually get this enacted)?
2. What could possibly go wrong?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4475702