With Abortion Ban, Texas GOP Embraces Frivolous Lawsuits

[Beaverhausen]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-abortion-law-frivolous-lawsuits_n_613114b0e4b0aac9c0141db3

The law lets anyone sue anyone connected to an abortion in Texas, with no penalties for frivolous cases that get dismissed.


Republicans have long raged against “frivolous lawsuits,” but GOP lawmakers in Texas have given the green light for any random person to haul someone to court over an abortion.

A restrictive new law that took effect this week gives plaintiffs the chance to win $10,000 or more in damages, plus attorney’s fees, even if they have no personal connection to the abortion that prompted their lawsuits. They also won’t face any risk of having to pay the defendant’s attorneys ― even if a judge dismisses a case for having no basis in evidence.

“The law doesn’t allow people who bring frivolous lawsuits to be sanctioned,” Leah Litman, assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan, told HuffPost. “The background rules of civil procedure usually allow judges to sanction people who bring frivolous lawsuits.”

The Texas law is the first of its kind to restrict abortion by letting random people file lawsuits instead of by creating criminal penalties. The Supreme Court refused to block the law on Wednesday because the case “presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions,” which means the ban has taken effect while the legal challenges work their way through the courts.

It’s unusual for Republicans to embrace new avenues for private lawsuits, especially against doctors. Last year, for instance, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made liability reform his top coronavirus policy proposal, claiming that greedy trial lawyers would bury the economy in an avalanche of lawsuits.

more at the link

this is why the Supreme Court's approval of this law is so insane to me.

[lame54]

1. Inspired by their king...

Trump lives and thrives by the frivolous lawsuit

[Irish_Dem]

2. Exactly, use the courts to harass and intimidate people.

[thucythucy]

3. Can't this work both ways?

What's to stop pro-choice advocates from filing lawsuits against every GOP lawmaker, every anti-choice church leader, every right wing pundit, in fact anyone with a Trump sign on their lawn?

If a thousand pro-choice advocates file one lawsuit a day, that's 365,000 lawsuits in one year's time.

Do you even need to hire an attorney? With no penalty for filing a frivolous suit, what's the downside, aside from the time invested?

If the sponsors of this bill were hit with a thousand lawsuits they would need to defend against, if nothing else it'll keep them or their staff busy.

Seems to me this is a perfect opportunity to do some heavy weight trolling.

If I lived in Texas, I'd definitely be researching the options.

[Irish_Dem]

4. Sociopaths want others to get in the mud and sling it around with them.

This serves several purposes:

1. It makes the innocent look guilty, and as bad as the sociopath.
So the public doesn't know who the good guy is.

2. While the good guy is matching and engaging in the sociopath tactics, the sociopath uses this as a distraction to commit more crimes.

I do agree however that it is time for Dems to realize that the GOP are ruthless sociopaths who are waging a war against us and America, and we need to fight back, and fight back hard. We just need to be very smart and strategic and not fall into the sociopath traps being set for us.

[thucythucy]

5. I don't know if this is "a trap set for us."

I doubt the sponsors of this law are thinking that far ahead.

As far as the public not knowing who the good guy is, I wonder if that even matters anymore.

The next election will see all the new voter suppression laws kicking in. If nothing else, mass confusion will reign in red states, meaning that any red state Democrat lawfully elected--if that's even possible anymore--will see their election tied up in litigation and controversy that may last for months. And even then, GOP run election boards may simply overturn any Democratic victory on account of "fraud" and install the GOP loser regardless. What do we do then, appeal to the Supreme Court? Accept the loss with the consolation that, well, "the public" knows who the good guys are?

We're up against the existential threat of our lifetimes. The idea that we need always to play nice, abide by our self imposed rules of decorum, express our "deep concern" and hope to win via our well reasoned arguments and ten point plans for dealing with climate change and Covid and racism may end up killing us, politically and--for some of us--quite literally.

The sociopaths will commit more crimes come what may. They don't need distractions--they've been doing it openly, unabashedly, unashamedly, and what's more they've been getting away with it.

It seems to me a bit of trolling--especially if it gums up the works enough to bring down this obscene law and actually saves the lives of women and girls--is not at all an illegitimate tactic. It's their law after all.

The ultimate "sociapath trap" may well be this notion that always playing nice will win out in the end. I had hoped we'd learned that lesson after President Obama's repeated attempts to achieve some sort of bipartisan agreement on anything. But here we are again, playing by the same rules. Perfect example: those who argue that we need to keep the filibuster because dropping it will give the GOP an excuse to do the same if and when they take the Senate. As if nuking the filibuster won't be the first item on their agenda, no matter that Democrats do or don't do.

I'm not advocating anything violent or anything illegal. But using their own law against them, using it to sow havoc so that women and girls in Texas may have a better chance of slipping through the confusion to get the care they need seems to me a tactic well worth considering.

[Irish_Dem]

6. I agree the time for playing nice is over.

Time for a big strategy shift.

[GoCubsGo]

7. And, this is what will eventually do in this law.

The courts will be so clogged up with this kind of shit that nothing is going to get done, regardless of whether or not its related to this law. But, ultimately, Republicans in the state government are also going to find themselves on the receiving end of a whole bunch of these frivolous lawsuits. Hopefully, they will bankrupt every last one of these motherfuckers in the process.