The Economist, “The paper chase”
June 23, 2011
Lawyers abusing procedures on evidence slow justice to a costly crawl
America is rightly considered litigation-happy. Opening a case is easy. But once begun, many factors conspire to make the process expensive and frustrating. Ambulance-chasing lawyers and runaway juries are only part of the problem, and probably not the most crucial one. Less than 2% of federal cases result in a trial. The worst problem comes in the pre-trial phase known as discovery…The right to discovery has been used by aggressive lawyers not just to find pieces of information, but to exhaust and impoverish adversaries through endless motions for more… (Read the whole article.)
