The best short cut would be to legalize drugs: so far the court system is clogged with drug cases.

the latest case i blogged was a semi-interesting en banc out of the 7th cir. a pro se got all the way to the grant of an en banc hearing by his lonesome. Big firm lawyer took over for the en banc rehearing. A sharply divided 9and plurality decision) en banc panel said that the big firm lawyer did a great job on the en banc rehearing, but that the pro se plaintiff was screwed by the new pleading rules before it began.

things my be worse, rather than better, for the undercapitalized in the post-Iqbal world.

The final bill: $55,000.

Had I had insurance, the insurance company would have had to pay full rate, plus their own staff time to manage the case. The insurer would have come out ahead to settle for $100K at the get-go.

Since when? It’s completely standard for liability insurance to give the insurer complete control of the defense of any claims against the insured covered by the policy.

Yes, but even against the government, whenever it goes to trial you’ll see the other side doing something along the lines of “Is this another case like Steven Hayne where the IP eventually had to walk back their claims in order to settle a defamation suit?

If courts ran like they do in a Perry Mason movie, perhaps.

In real life that argument will go nowhere because it’s pounding on the table. The only way the IP’s opponents would make that argument in court is if they neither have evidence or the law on their side (otherwise that’s what they’d be arguing). Judges know that people settle even when their case is strong, so they don’t care. Very little of IP’s work would be in front of a jury that might be swayed by emotion. I believe it’s almost entirely appellate work.

However, Hayne and his ilk already paint the IP as a bunch of out-of-state Yankee liberal friends of criminals (it doesnt help that one of the founders of IP was associated with the defense of OJ). So, I don’t see the reputational damage to be so bad. By contrast, going to trial in the Hayne case would cost a lot of money, even if IP won: that will clearly “hamstring their ability to continue their work in the future”

IP had to target Hayne as an individual because he was basically a contractor. Hayne’s suit is grounded in loss of contract because of defamation. If Hayne had been a Miss. state employee, IP would sue the goverment, and the govt has a harder time counter suing for defamation for all sorts of legal and practical reasons.

I would prefer they did an anti-SLAPP law instead.

The insurance company can’t afford to litigate every case to its conclusion without blowing through their reserves.

The IP has largely accomplished their goal of pulling Hayne’s teeth. The man is utterly discredited. There is little upside to winning their case in court, and it would easily cost $100,000. Certainly even if they won handily, and got a judge to award them attorney’s fees and costs, they are unlikely to get any money out of the ruined Hayne.

The downside is that they could lose and have to pay his attorney fees. If they go it alone, they could still lose their insurance coverage, and let’s face it, the IP is going to get sued numerous times in the future.

It sucks, but this is the way life works.

After all, now that CU has turned insurance companies into ppl

You really are an imbecille. It did no such thing. The court decided that you couldn’t have one set of rules for the Tribune corporation and another for a corporation called Citizens United. And given a choice between ordering the New York Times to stop publishing news stories on politics or allowing all companies the same privileges accorded to the Times, they made the no-brainer correct choice.