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Frivolous litigation is the use of legal processes with apparent disregard for the merit of one's own arguments. It includes presenting an argument with reason to know that it would certainly fail, or acting without a basic level of diligence in researching the relevant law and facts.
In law, frivolous or vexatious is a term used to challenge a complaint or a legal proceeding being heard as lacking in merit, or to deny, dismiss or strike out any ensuing judicial or non-judicial processes. The term is used in several jurisdictions, such as England & Wales, Ireland and New Zealand.
Champerty and maintenance are doctrines in common law jurisdictions that aim to preclude frivolous litigation: Maintenance is the intermeddling of a disinterested party to encourage a lawsuit. [1]: 260 It is: "A taking in hand, a bearing up or upholding of quarrels or sides, to the disturbance of the common right." [2]
In the field of law and economics, the English rule is a rule controlling assessment of lawyers' fees arising out of litigation. The English rule provides that the party that loses in court pays the other party's legal costs.
The acronym was coined in the 1980s by University of Denver professors Penelope Canan and George W. Pring. [13] The term was originally defined as "a lawsuit involving communications made to influence a governmental action or outcome, which resulted in a civil complaint or counterclaim filed against nongovernment individuals or organizations on a substantive issue of some public interest or ...
Filing vexatious litigation is considered an abuse of the judicial process and may result in sanctions against the offender. A single action, even a frivolous one, is usually not enough to raise a litigant to the level of being declared vexatious. Rather, a pattern of frivolous legal actions is typically required to rise to the level of vexatious.
The Hyde Amendment (Pub.L. 105-119, § 617, Nov. 26, 1997, 111 Stat. 2519, codified as a note following 18 U.S.C. § 3006A) is a federal statute allowing federal courts to award attorneys' fees and court costs to criminal defendants "where the court finds that the position of the United States was 'vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith'".
The Liebeck case is often cited in a misleading manner by proponents of tort reform, who present an inaccurate or incomplete summary of the facts in order to falsely frame the case as frivolous litigation. [5] [26] [27] ABC News called the case "the poster child of excessive lawsuits". [6]