We must demand that our policymakers focus on reform that will continue to protect us while ensuring lawyers cannot continue to abuse our courts to get quick cash.

Guest post from Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch executive director Melissa Landry.  Last month, […]

For years, personal injury lawyers have been trying to prevent consumers from choosing to resolve disputes through arbitration, a fair and cost-effective alternative to filing lawsuits.

Thinking about signing up your child for little league? You might want to consider hiring a lawyer too, after you hear about the latest outrageous lawsuit being brought against a little leaguer!

As many entrepreneurs and small businesses know, lawsuit abuse holds back innovation and growth. For instance, potentially life-saving technology to prevent children from being left in cars has long been on hold in part because of liability issues. Now, we’re hearing news about another new technology that is seeing delays because of potential litigation – driverless cars!

While driverless cars may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, they’re actually on the precipice of becoming a part of our everyday lives! And this is good news – their technology has the potential to reduce accident rates, traffic congestion and air pollution.

Editor’s Note: Project Lawsuit Abuse regularly highlights lawsuit abuse news from across the country. Today, Tom Scott, Executive Director of California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, contributed a guest post for Project Lawsuit Abuse.

A new trend has been popping up in the legal world: people are walking into glass doors and suing establishments for not properly marking the doors. Last year, a woman sued for $1 million after running into a clear glass door at an Apple Store; more recently, a man sued a Louisiana hotel after he ran into a glass door and broke his nose.

Here’s another outrageous, and upsetting, lawsuit. In January 2011, police officer Jason Servo crashed a department vehicle into a ditch while driving under the influence. He was investigated and subsequently fired from the police force, since he broke the law. That seems like a fairly predictable consequence of his actions, right?  

But what was not predictable was Servo’s decision to sue the police department for his firing. His lawyer’s argument is that alcoholism qualifies as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that he can’t be fired for his actions.

Our courts are intended to make people whole. When someone has a serious injury that occurred due to someone else’s negligence, then they should receive appropriate and reasonable compensation.

Unfortunately, we hear time and time again about folks who are using our courts to play the lawsuit lottery. These people are not trying to gain justice – they’re trying to get rich.

A recent story from West Virginia exemplifies this abuse quite well. In 2009, Erica Tamburin incurred injuries in the parking lot of a Cabela’s Wholesale store when another car reportedly hit her truck. Tamburin sued, claiming injuries to her “head, neck, shoulders, back, chest, arms, legs, body chemistry and psyche,” as well as annoyance, inconvenience, pain and anguish.

Recently, a judge rebuked two New York lawyers for disingenuous tactics in filing disability lawsuits. The lawyers, apparently, had been filing scores of lawsuits, claiming that local businesses violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and recruiting plaintiffs only after the fact. Their plaintiffs, of course, hardly received any monetary damages, while they received hefty legal fees.

One example of how these lawyers misbehaved – they accused a Subway restaurant of having a bathroom that was inaccessible to wheelchairs. In reality, however, the Subway didn’t have a bathroom at all!

Ridiculous lawsuit alert! In April 2011, a 24 year old man name Joseph Pignatiello attended a punk show in Pittsburgh. Apparently, he wasn’t aware that punk shows tend to involve violent mosh pits. He claims that other concertgoers pulled him into the pit, threw him around, and caused him to break his knee and sprain his shoulder.

Now, Mr. Pignatiello is suing the venue owners, the band playing that night, and a production company, saying that they “failed to prevent aggressive, intoxicated, drugged and/or otherwise impaired individuals from forming a mosh pit.”