pelmet wrote: ↑Fri Nov 30, 2018 10:36 am
Being a victim does not give you the right to victimize others. I'm sure that a frivolous counter-lawsuit would be appropriate. Call it my legal strategy. If you want to play that game....OK, you started it.
Suing people/companies not responsible for aviation accidents has crippled the industry over the years. Time to fight back.
A court doesn't recognize the use of its own process as "victimization". Lots of people lose lawsuits - in fact every law suit that goes to trial has one side whose claims are judged to lack merit. If every losing side was entitled to damages just for being sued, that would be a nonsense. It's possible that you can have *all* your costs paid by the person suing you, if the court decides exceptionally, that the claims against you should never have been brought. But that's unusual.
You might not enjoy being sued (you'd be strange if you did) but there has to be an arena where people can have their claims tested without fear of being punished for doing so.
If you issue a countersuit without a legitimate cause of action, it would be thrown out on a "motion to dismiss" (I think, in the US under rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and in Canada see rule 21.01 of the Rules of Civil Procedure) - you'd never get to court.
If you feel that strongly, you can ask for the complainant to be declared a vexatious litigant. But it typically requires a repeated pattern of frivolous claims by someone for a court to go that far.
In Canada there is also this rule:
2.1.01 (1) The court may, on its own initiative, stay or dismiss a proceeding if the proceeding appears on its face to be frivolous or vexatious or otherwise an abuse of the process of the court. O. Reg. 43/14, s. 1.
Again, from the Rules of Civil Procedure.
You may remember that in the US general aviation manufacturing more or less shut down at the end of the 1980s because of a string of speculative lawsuits. The solution was the US's General Aviation Revitalisation Act which was passed in 1994.
I'm sorry about your club. It might appear obvious to you that the accident had nothing to do with the fuel. But there has to be a venue where someone who can show they suffered a loss can claim that it did have something to do with the fuel, and have that claim examined in a fair manner. I don't think it's fair to make their motives (or your impression of their motives) for doing so part of the consideration. The claim has to stand or fall on its own merits.
DId you hear the one about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality.