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SCOTUS Asked To Decide On Legal Fees In RIAA Cases
Fogerty's ghost notes that the Supreme Court has been asked to decide whether exonerated RIAA defendants should automatically be awarded attorneys' fees. Texas resident Cliff Thompson was sued by the RIAA, which subsequently dropped its copyright infringement lawsuit after it determined that his adult daughter was the culprit. Thompson was denied attorneys' fees by the district and appeals courts and is asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on the matter. "In the petition for certiorari filed with the Supreme Court, Thompson's attorney Ted Lee lays out the RIAA's legal strategy and notes what he describes as the 'inherent unfairness' of the lawsuits... The fight between the RIAA and alleged copyright infringers is inherently unbalanced due to the vast financial resources available to the record labels. The risk-reward ratio for defendants is seriously out of kilter, and mandating that a successful defense — even if it comes from the RIAA's decision to voluntarily dismiss a case — results in the record labels picking up the tab would even things out."
Any /. lawyers care to explain why the defendants would be unable to collect for legal fees on these lawsuits? I'm not terribly versed in how this legal stuff works, but I was of the understanding that in any case, if I am wrongfully taken to court, I am allowed to counter-sue for legal fees. I thought that was part of the balance that kept people from suing just for fun with no repercussion.
What is the difference with these lawsuits the RIAA is bringing?
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
It's easy to see why an entity like RIAA should be forced to pay legal fees if it loses or drops its case, but making that award automatic would be even worse in the long run.
If a person sues a chemical company for polluting a lake, and the company gets off, it will wreck the person who tried to sue. A few million is corporate discovery costs and lawyers it too much to risk.
I think the relative difference in resources between the litigating entities should be considered. In the "david vs goliath" scenario, david should never be made to pay and goliath should be made to pay upon loss. That is hard to codify into law.
I don't think a strict "loser pays" system is really what people want. Let's say you sue a medium to large corporation. The case is close, but you lose. The corporation could easily have huge legal expenses, even if yours are relatively minor. Would an individual (or small corporation) ever take the risk of suing a large corporation?
I realize that other countries do have loser pays systems, and it works, but I've never heard conclusively that it's better. Those countries also tend to have more active consumer protection on the part of their governments, which would make suits which are currently brought by individuals (or classes) less necessary.
I tend to think that the system that we have now is good in theory, though not so good in practice. The bar to find a suit frivolous or harassing is so high as to be practically meaningless. I think if that bar were lowered some, we'd have the system that most individuals desire.
An idea I read once that I liked is a loser-pays, but with the caveat that the loser's liability is limited to what (s)he spent on legal fees. So, if you sue Ford and lose, you'd at worst be out the cost of your own lawsuit. If Ford wants to win by throwing lawyers at the case, they can, just like today, but it'll be on their dime, not yours.
This would also give both sides an extra incentive to keep their legal fees down, always a good thing.
In general, the idea of granting legal fees to the winner is something that is a tricky balancing act for fairness.
Most of the time, the person filing the suit should not get their legal fees, because most of the time, if the outcome isn't enough to justify the fees, why did you file in the first place? Generally, if you need to sue someone, the harm should be worth the cost to the society at large (court costs) and worth the legal fees or why did you sue?
The idea of granting fees to a winning defender is more interesting, but suffers from the problem of unequal footing. If I want to sue Microsoft or Google or Ford, they can immediately pile up bazillions of dollars of legal fees in their defense. If I lose, I lose _everything_ for the mistake of suing them. I might even be in the right, but have lost because their lawyers were better, and I would be punished for the temerity of suing.
Therefore, in the case of successfully defending against a lawsuit, the standard in the US has long been that for the defender to get their fees, they need to prove that the lawsuit was more than just wrong, but was somehow evil, that it was frivolous, or harrassing, or otherwise created with the full knowledge that it was without basis in the first place.
In the case presented here, the district court, and the appeals court both said, "The owner of the IP address is a reasonable target to sue. If you find out that he wasn't the one who infringed, well and good, we dismiss the suit, but that didn't make it frivolous."
That's not a COMPLETELY ridiculous position. Of course, we know, and the defendant claims that the RIAA makes no effort to confirm identity before it sues, and that therefore, the suit was frivolous in that sense, but on face, the idea isn't insane, only their implementation of it.
The problem is, if we change the rules so that the successful defendant AUTOMATICALLY gets their legal fees, the precedent will not be restricted to RIAA cases, and the chilling effect on consumers may well be "bad"
Most of that badness can be eliminated by a system of caps on recovered fees similar to the cap on legal fees for lawyers working on social security disability cases, but that requires legislation, and should not be put into place by an activist judiciary.