From: "Bob W"
It's a philosophical difference, and no more "indefensible"
> > than the US system of "one law for the rich, one for the poor"
> > which allows those with deep enough pockets to buy their way
> > out of just about any situation.
>
> My understanding is the British law in this case is sort of in response
> to an old U.S. Supreme Court decision that EVERY defendant should have
> access to adequate legal counsel.
>
> The U.S. decision applied only to criminal cases, but the British
> didn't
> make that distinction when Parliament passed their law. And they
> actually put some teeth in their law.
they did make a distinction. There are different rules and entitlements
applying to criminal and civil law and different organisations dealing with
each branch.
<http://www.legalservices.gov.uk/default.asp>
What I meant is the British applied the concept that "no one should be
denied effective legal representation just because they can't afford to
pay a lawyer" to civil law as well as criminal cases.
They did not limit it to criminal defendants the way the U.S. Supreme
Court decision did. In the U.S. you can still be cheated of justice in
civil matters simply because you don't have as much money to pay lawyers
as the other side does.
Civil litigation is expensive, and someone with enough money can screw
you in court - burying you in lawyers, forcing you to choose between
bankruptcy or surrender. Sometimes both.
It happened to someone I know.
He was a one man shop working on computer networks starting the early
80s. When the internet began to open up to commercial operations, he
registered his domain name as gateway.net.
Later a company in South Dakota chose the name Gateway2000. In the late
90s they realized the 2000 part of their name was getting ready to
become obsolete, and changed their name to Gateway.
They offered my friend $1000 for the domain name he had been using for
15 years, and when he declined to sell, they sued him for trademark
infringement. Buried him in lawyers.
The first thing they did was seek an injunction to prohibit him from
using his domain name until the case was settled. An injunction the
court granted despite his showing that he had been doing business as
Gateway, using the domain name gateway.net a decade before the
Gateway2000 company was incorporated, and long before they decided to
change their name to simply Gateway.
Gateway2000 had the money, and were able to buy the court. Their lawyers
shopped around until they found a judge who would grant the injunction.
Bankrupted him. Gateway used their financial muscle to buy "justice"; or
more properly, to deny justice to my acquaintance.
Which, BTW, is why I never recommend Gateway, and won't buy anything
from them. And since Acer now owns Gateway, screw them too!
Any human system which tries to be just is subject to freeloaders, to people
whose entitlement may seem unfair, and to people we just plain don't like
such as wife-beaters, but that's part of the price of trying to be a just
society. One that I personally don't mind paying provided there are
reasonable efforts to identify and deter the few freeloaders.
I'm not criticizing it. As you might infer from above, I don't think
it's a good idea for "justice" to be for sale to the highest bidder.
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