Report to the People
16th August 2004
See
You Anywhere But Court
It
probably won’t come as much of a surprise that, in the USA – where the obese
try to sue McDonalds for selling them the food which made them fat – there is
an annual award for the most frivolous legal action.
Known,
for reasons not sufficiently important to go into here, as the “Stella
Awards”, a typical example from the “True Stella Awards” website (www.StellaAwards.com)
features a man who was struck by lightning in the car park of an amusement park.
A textbook “act of God”? Apparently
not. He filed a lawsuit against the amusement park, arguing it
should have warned people not to be outside during a thunderstorm.
Whether
or not cases like this are successful is not really the point.
What is more interesting is why they are brought in the first place.
Why are we so ready to resort to the law when we have a grievance?
And
by “we”, incidentally, I include Scots.
We might think of litigiousness as an American disease, but, despite the
fact that only a tiny fraction of actions ever reach the courtroom, there were
still over 115,000 civil cases in our Sheriff Courts in 2002.
Certainly
the rise of the doctrine of individual rights has played a part.
But so has the corresponding decline in the influence of traditional
dispute resolution arenas, such as the family, the church and communities.
Now,
if court cases were quick, certain, cheap and painless, our reliance on them
wouldn’t be a problem. But, as
anyone who’s had any experience of the system knows, this is far from the
case. Research by Stirling
University shows that the cost of pressing even a neighbour dispute in court can
range from £200 to over £2500.
So,
to keep us out of court and lawyers out of our wallets, the Scottish Executive
has launched new advice on finding alternatives to litigation.
The advice outlines what disputes – perhaps in the family,
neighbourhood or commercial spheres – may benefit from a different approach
and provides information on where you can get advice on how to proceed.
Services
such as mediation, of course, will never fully replace our courts.
It will not be suitable for all types of dispute and we will always need
courts when agreement proves impossible.
But
most of us involved in a dispute just want it sorted out.
And, if there’s a chance mediation or arbitration could do that with
the minimum fuss and expense, it would be a very stubborn character who would
refuse to give it a try.
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