In the era of deregulation and lax enforcement, the threat of a private law suit has been the main threat corporations feel from individuals. Also I believe that starting in the 1980s there has been an influential conservative libertarian school of legal thought called "Law and Economics" (from the subject heading) that argued for massive privatization of regulation and consumer protection on the grounds that private law suits could handle it better.
Now we see where all this winds up. First they get the de-regulation then they eliminate the lawsuits. Thomas Lepeardo At 10:53 PM 7/16/2005 -0700, you wrote: This is all very interesting, but can any of you Americans explain what relevance it has to contemporary political economy? Why should anyone outside (or even inside) the US be interested? Paul Phillips Autoplectic wrote: <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/business/yourmoney/17tort.html> July 17, 2005 Robin Hoods or Legal Hoods? By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN and JONATHAN D. GLATER "Without notes he launched into a brief history of the American tort system and how crucial it was in protecting the masses from the greed and corruption of big corporations that make dangerous products. And, while he was at it, he didn't like insurance companies and banks and multinationals and Republicans, either." - John Grisham, "The King of Torts" THREE months ago, William S. Lerach, the powerful class-action attorney both feared and loathed in executive suites across the country, received a disturbing call from his lawyer. Federal prosecutors, Mr. Lerach was told, wanted more time to build a criminal case against him. Until then, a three-year investigation into whether Mr. Lerach and his former New York law firm, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, had used illegal tactics in shareholder lawsuits that made him and the firm rich and famous had appeared to be dormant. The phone call meant that the inquiry had suddenly gained traction.
