On The Third Hand

Saturday, 05 Jan 2002

Or just a lone nutcase? Fox reports, you decide. Summary: A small plane crashed into the 20th floor of the 40 story Bank of America building in Tampa, Fl. The plane took off without clearance, and when ordered to land, instead crashed into the building. [Update] CNN reports that the plane was being flown by a 15-year old student pilot.

I just consider it suspicious that the plane crashed into the Bank of America building. Teenage copycat, perhaps?

Glenn Reynolds mentioned on something this morning that I'd like to see done. He says: "There's a good argument that "loser pays" should always apply to the government." Perry, at Samizdata, picked up on it and argues that the concept should be expanded to a simple "loser pays". He does add: "particularly if they were not the party which brought the action." Glenn then expands on his earlier post and basically limits the idea to criminal prosecution by the government. I suspect, since he's a law professor, he may not feel the same about other instances of legal injustice.

I don't quite agree with either one here. I would like to see a restricted loser pays idea. The problem is just where to restrict it? Allowing it only to defendants in situations where the government starts criminal proceedings is a good start, but doesn't even begin to get into the problem of frivolous lawsuits and 'I'll beggar you unless you give in" lawsuits, both of which Perry mentions. On the other hand, making a 'loser pays' for all lawsuits goes much too far, and would tend to discourage people from taking legal action when they should.

My thought here is that we should start where Glenn is, a have a 'loser pays' for criminal actions started by the government, where they lose (assuming the state is not also paying for the defence anyway). Then we should start looking at various other types of suits, and trying to set up some stringent rules for other types of suits where that should apply. I think there might be a place for jury in this too, perhaps an option for them to declare that loser pays in particular types of suits.

I don't have the answers; I'm just thinking in type. But this is something about which 'we the people' can get noisy -- at least enough to get it looked into and make it rise up a bit more on the campaign issues list.

I've added a few more blogs to my list. Probably more to come. The first few are ones I check daily, the rest are ones I don't get to every day. I'm a speed reader, but I do have limits!

I've decided to change my mind about keeping the index on a daily basis; it will have at least two days on it. I will try to keep it smallish, since I seem to have a fair number of readers coming in on slower lines.