At 22:04 24-8-01 -0400, Bob Zimmerman wrote:
>I do not know if lawsuits are common or rare in his country.
They do happen, but not all that often. When a dispute reaches the stage
where people start hiring lawyers, these disputes often do not make it to a
judge, but are settled out of court.
There are a few other reasons why these lawsuits do not happen all that
often. First, there is the "no cure, no pay" principle. This makes the
threshold for filing a lawsuit in the US very low (if you loose, you do not
have to pay your lawyer). This principle is illegal in The Netherlands: if
you hire a lawyer, you will have to pay him. If you win, the court may
order the other party to repay you those costs, but you will initially have
to pay the fees yourself. And at an average of NLG 350 per hour, it adds up
real fast.
Second, we have a different interpretation over here of what is reasonable.
Many cases that in the US are considered "normal" are considered
"ridiculous" here, and would not even make it to court in the first place.
These are cases such as sueing McDonalds for millions of dollars when you
accidentally spill hot coffee over yourself, or sueing the manufacturer of
your microwave oven for millions of dollars because the manual did not say
you could not use it to dry your cat...
Third, it is often not worth the time and money. The McDonalds case would
probably not have made it to court, but be settled out of court. McDonalds
would most likely agree to pay for cleaning your clothes and your legal and
medical costs (limited to the costs that are not covered by your legal and
medical insurance), and perhaps pay a few hundred (at best, a few thousand)
guilders for immaterial damages (depending on how severely you were really
burned). If this case would make it to court, the outcome would be pretty
much the same.
The cat-in-microwave case would not even make it to court, because over
here it is considered general knowledge that a microwave is a device for
preparing food. If you want to dry your cat, you use a towel...
No court in The Netherlands will award a person millions of guilders in
damages. Sueing for emotional damages is almost impossible; IIRC, only the
victim can sue for that, and even then will not walk out of court a sudden
millionaire. It is impossible to sue for emotional damages you suffered
because a loved one was killed.
Jeroen
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