Typical lawsuits for "easy" cash - just asking, not planning

September 5, 2023 9:57 AM

I swear its a question from a conversation we had, but what are people called who are notorious for making lawsuits? Not frivolously, rather it's their bread and butter. We knew a guy who would troll the internet looking for websites that were not ADA-compliant and sue them, normally with decent payouts. What other things do folks who do this sue on?

Sorry if it doesn't make sense! Let me know and I'll try to better clarify.

posted by xicana63 to Law & Government (13 answers total)

Ambulance chasers?
posted by staggernation at 9:58 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

One term is trolls. You can look up "accessibility trolls" and "ADA trolls", or similarly "patent trolls".

"These are not “frivolous” suits in the sense that they have no merit. What sets these lawsuits apart is that they are filed in such enormous volume that the attorneys involved could not possibly represent the plaintiffs properly in any one of them. That fact suggests that the attorneys have no intention of taking the cases to a conclusion that expands access for people with disabilities, but only hope to extract a quick settlement."
https://alda.org/lawsuits-seek-captions-on-websites-is-this-good-news-or-not/
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 9:59 AM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

what are people called who are notorious for making lawsuits?

I, and I think most, would call them "litigious."
posted by General Malaise at 10:09 AM on September 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

Going off what I commonly see in commercials that scream serial litigation, I would think medical malpractice is probably one area where this is relatively prevalent.
posted by ttyn at 10:10 AM on September 5, 2023

Plaintiffs.

Anywhere there is a government regulation that requires businesses to spend a relative (to them) enormous amount of cash to comply often for a small number of people for whom the regulation is made.

One area which is adjacent to what you wrote about is stores and restaurants that are not ADA accessible. Generally, wheelchair access issues. In NYC, these establishments get sued all the time into compliance or settlements.

There are also shareholder lawsuits. A plaintiff will literally buy 1 share and then sue for some reason or for some breach of fiduciary duty to the shareholder.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:38 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

A common term for this is "serial litigant," and most often you hear about it in the context of the ADA because of the way that statute is written to provide a private right of action.

I am not aware of other areas where individual plaintiffs bring huge numbers of claims against different parties, but there are definitely high-volume lawyers who find a niche and stick to it. In addition to the ones you would expect like personal injury lawyers or high-volume bankruptcy lawyers, Spencer Sheehan is famous for this in food labelling, a handful of firms do this with copyrighted works, some do it with website accessibility (e.g. testing screen readers on thousands of pages and instantly filing when a page is non-compliant), some focus on California's Proposition 65, etc. Once you find a law that has "statutory damages" (i.e. $X per violation), and especially one that has statutory damages AND attorney fees, you will find specialists who work in that area.
posted by AgentRocket at 10:47 AM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

A "vexatious litigant" is someone who files serial suits not necessarily for money but for power or annoyance. One time I was sued for not returning a phone call—no joke. I noticed the plaintiff was on the judge's docket for several other cases that day. He made a fool of himself in court by trying to go all Perry Mason on me. When it came time for judgement, the judge just said "I'll take it under advisement." I counter-sued him (and won), and I assume he lost all his other cases too. I think he took everyone he had a beef with at that time to small claims court and must have filed the paperwork all on the same day.
posted by jabah at 10:53 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Look up Patent Trolls. They are a huge menace to society.
posted by tafetta, darling! at 11:35 AM on September 5, 2023

As for the "what else do people sue on" part of the question, see this recent Ask on an asbestos/mesothelioma suit filed in Madison County, Illinois (question as written says "Mason County" but OP later clarifies in a comment it's definitely Madison) which is a "magnet jurisdiction" for these types of cases.
posted by sigmagalator at 12:27 PM on September 5, 2023

"private enforcement mechanism" seems to be the generic term when a legislature decides to use lawsuit-based funding for enforcement rather than explicitly funding an enforcement agency.
posted by straw at 12:42 PM on September 5, 2023

Just now reading a story about one in the New Yorker, a hero of the people who sues for false advertising, The Lies in Your Grocery Store - "Most people accept the gimmicks of food labelling. One lawyer can’t stomach them."
(archive link)
posted by Rash at 1:50 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

An example of someone who attempted to make a living from lawsuits is Leo Stoller who would register common words (most famously 'stealth') as trademarks without intending to use them and then sue people who attempted to use those words in their product names. He and others who do this are called Trademark Trolls.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 5:00 AM on September 6, 2023

Look up "private attorney general" and "citizen suits." These actions often serve a very useful purpose--laws that are not enforced are worse than useless, but if we had a government with sufficient resources to enforce all the laws all the time, we would be living in a police state. So these sorts of private actions can help keep our legal system functioning somewhere in the middle, and people who bring them can be called noble. Other times they can be called a persistent pain in the ass, and much worse.
posted by Corvid at 5:36 PM on September 8, 2023 [1 favorite]