Yeah, I believe that ending a whole pile of legal strategies is the point of that suggestion.

I'm all for it. If you bring suit the other party should be allowed to cause you to have to continue if you feel like dropping it. There is some potential for abuse there though, this is not a simple matter.

Agreed, in-so-far as any binary decision fails to capture all the nuances, there will be someone who exploits those nuances.

What if you run out of money for lawyers and want to drop the suit because of that?

Counterpoint: if you want to sue everyone in the Unites States for pirating your porn, ask for $50 in settlement for dropping charges, and drop charges for anyone who shows up in court with legal representation, should the judge be sympathetic to you? Isn't a frivolous lawsuit a frivolous lawsuit anymore?

In addition to the counterpoint that newjersey brings up, we could also restrict this power to cases where the plaintiff is the government (local, state, or federal).

While nuisance suits from private actors can totally be ruinous, the potential for harm from government actors is so much greater.

Yes, but it would probably also cause a bunch of other problems.

It's not that obvious. Paul Klemperer (auction theorist) covers a similar question: what happens if the losing party has to pay the prevailing party's legal fees? Answer: the same amount will be spent on legal fees and the same cases will be brought forward.

(1) See middle of page 5 here: http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/klemperer/WhyEveryEconomist.p... Where he debunks Dan Quayle's court reform ideas

> ...covers a similar question: what happens if the losing party has to pay the prevailing party's legal fees?

That's not at all a similar question. We're talking about staking the following strategy through the heart:

* Some part of USGov makes an overreaching legal demand using a really shaky (perhaps unsupportable) legal argument.

* They get a magistrate to issue an order in an "emergency" ex parte hearing

Now either:

* USGov presents that court order to a small and/or legally clueless business who says: "This is a court order! I have to comply with it, else I get in trouble!". USGov gets what they wanted and gets to bully another unwary victim with the same bullshit tactic

or

* USGov presents that court order to a larger and/or legally savvy business who examines it and says: "No. This is bullshit."

* That company goes to the court and tells the court why the order is bullshit

* The court quietly mumbles: "USGov... they're right, looks like it's bullshit."

* USGov goes: "Oops! We really didn't need that anyway!", withdraws the request, and retries it at a later day with a less savvy victim

So, completely different situations.

If USGov had to keep pushing such cases through if the defendant demanded that they be pushed through, what you'd get is what we get when Newegg fights patent trolls: evisceration of bullies, thugs, and the chicanery that permits them to operate.