A Frivolous Lawsuit is a shakedown to see what falls from the tree. Frivolous litigation is an intentional practice of starting or carrying on a lawsuit knowingly that it is without legal merit with little or no chance of success.
In the United States, the law of the land is that, each party to litigation pays for their own court costs, without regard to win or lose. This encourages plaintiffs to litigate without fear of fee liability and since we have too many lawyers without ability to get a real job for a real fee they are willing to take a contingent risk for the shakedown. It’s all in the numbers: the more they file the more the likely that one or two of those filings will pay off. Shake the tree to collect low-bearing fruit.
101,000,000 lawsuits were filed in 2009 reported by National Center for State Courts. We suspect the number is closer to 30million because there is no definitive source accumulating this real data.
A statistic sourced to the Association of Trial Lawyers of America reports that 79% of people believe advertising by personal injury lawyers encourages people to sue, even if they have not been injured, at an annual cost to the US Economy of $233 billion dollars in civil litigation (source: //www.statisticbrain.com/civil-lawsuit-statistics )
The following website www.webrecon.com proudly reports: 4,428,253,363 litigants have been processed since January 1, 2009 and the number flickers upwards every second ( https://www.webrecon.com/b/fdcpa-case-statistics/fdcpa-and-other-consumer-lawsuit-statistics-april-1-15-2012/ )…as part of its quick analysis, the site explains: “…as of April 15, 2012…litigation slowed again in the first half of April, likely in part because three full weekends fell in this short 15 day period.”
Reported in Newsweek:
“Americans don’t just sue big corporations or bad people. They sue doctors over misfortunes that no doctor could prevent. They sue their school officials for disciplining their children for cheating. They sue their local governments when they slip and fall on the sidewalk, get hit by drunken drivers, get struck by lightning on city golf courses-and even when they get attacked by a goose in a park (that one brought the injured plaintiff $10,000). They sue their ministers for failing to prevent suicides. They sue their Little League coaches for not putting their children on the all-star team. They sue their wardens when they get hurt playing basketball in prison. They sue when their injuries are severe but self-inflicted, when their hurts are trivial and when they have not suffered at all.”
Many of these cases do not belong in court. But clients and lawyers sue anyway, because they hope they will get lucky and win a jackpot from a system that allows sympathetic juries to award plaintiffs not just real damages.
There are countless stories of stupid lawsuits. Like the woman who spilled coffee in her lap while driving, or the person causing an accident while using the cell phone and texting while driving, or even using the toilet brush to brush their teeth causing manufacturer to print product warning for obvious stupidity:
A warning on a snow sled:
“Beware: sled may develop a high speed under certain snow conditions.”
A 5-inch brass fishing lure with three hooks is labeled:
“Harmful if swallowed.”
A warning on an electric router made for carpenters:
“This product not intended for use as a dental drill.”
A sticker on a 13-inch wheel on a wheelbarrow warns:
“Not intended for highway use.”
A household iron contains the warning:
“Never iron clothes while they are being worn.”
A warning label on a baby stroller cautions:
“Remove child before folding.”
So! What can you do to protect yourself?
As I always used to say to my children: “So… knowing this piece of information, how are you going to make money with it? I used to bring my children, and sometimes their friends, and we would go over the Value-Line stock investment charts, and we would pick stocks they knew about: i.e. Mario what are you drinking? He would say Coke. What industry is Coke? He would respond: “Beverage?” Can you name other products in the Beverage industry? He would respond by “Pepsi, Snapple, what about wine? You get the picture. We then would go to the library and visually look at stock charts and conclude that if there was high unemployment, people would drink more beverage, and if we guessed that unemployment was going up, by investing in Coke, or Pepsi, or other beverage stocks, we would stand to make money.
So if you are in business, own a home with equity, have small children, or have any other asset, you know that your wealth can evaporate just before your eyes with one frivolous lawsuit.
How many times have you told your children, old enough to be at home by themselves, that you and mom were going away for the long weekend? You planned to leave late Friday and come home late on a Sunday or early Monday.
Before leaving you would gather your kids and would instruct them: no friends, no drinking, no smoking, no going over other friends, lock the door, etc. and here’s the phone number we are going to be at. And about an hour before you left to get back home you would call and announce that you were one hour from home. Did you do that? Did your parents do that?
You are thinking: but that’s why we have an Umbrella Policy. Just for that purpose. And that’s why we also have a fire insurance policy and automobile insurance. So I’m protected.
Well, that’s true. Insurance is your first line of defense. But, what happens when you leave home, on a Friday afternoon with your wife, for that long weekend and your minor children decide to have a few friends that turns into a high-test full blown invitation to all the high school football team and cheerleaders and leave your house fully intoxicated and 3 to 4 kids get into a car and cause quadriplegics.
Guess who is going to sing that song when your “Umbrella Policy” gets cancelled and you stand before a judge considering not only “civil” damages but “criminal” charges because you left your kids “unattended.” Did you know that you own every nut-and-bolt of your children under the age of majority, most states the age of 18.
Our Ultra Trust® is designed specifically for these unwanted circumstances. It is the UNCANCELLABLE insurance policy.
When you follow our Ultra Trust® advise and execute our instructions in a timely manner, your will diminish the probability of a potential frivolous creditor problem, eliminate probate, eliminate estate taxes, and when properly implemented eliminate the confiscator-predatory Medicaid spend-down provisions. We have a 100% success rate with this strategy over the last 30 years.
While you may not be able to eliminate frivolous lawsuits from every starving lawyer, no one can. But you will be able to dictate the terms under which greedy lawyers and their clients get compensated. With an Ultra Trust® irrevocable trust you are the starving lawyer’s biggest nightmare.