Who decides what counts as a win or a lose when parties agree to a settlement? Are there cases where it’s not obvious who is really doing all the winning?
Mind you I don’t have any answers and I’m not intending on being adversarial. I just don’t immediately see how this can work.
That's my understanding as well, so I guess the question is: if you lose on one claim, and win on another, and win a significant change in terms, did you win or lose the case?
"No, reaching a settlement is not considered "winning" a suit. Companies generally settle when their legal fees for going to court would exceed the amount of the settlement."
I was going to write exactly this but didn't because it seemed too obvious to do so. The plaintiff ALSO has legal costs if they go for a ruling. This is why I said a settlement is usually considered a victory. If both parties already agree on the outcome then going trough the legal procedure is a waste of time and money. Only if sandmann's lawyers didn't agree on the settlement money then it would be advantageous to push for a ruling. Hence this could be considered 'winning' the suit even though there is no such thing on courts. only rulings(Ex, in favor of) and paying the legal fees of the other party.
Doesn't something like the loser paying winner's cost already exist?
I've heard about it, but I don't know much about law. My lawyer once told me, here in my country, it was possible for the winner to ask the loser for compensation, but that had many "ifs". But I have no idea how it works in the US. Does it exists at all? Anyone with legal experience could shed a light?
Settlements are a win because they don't set precedent, and are often much cheaper than going to trial, and much, much cheaper than losing. There are plenty of companies that skirt the law or civil agreements hoping that, in the worst case, they can just settle if they're brought to court.
Even better - loser pays the winner the exact amount they paid their legal team. By their own admission "at arm's length" so to speak, that was the value of the litigation to them.
If one party wins, they do not have to pay the legal fees of the looser.
Settlement offers have no bearing on this.
If one party wins, their (reasonable) legal fees usually are paid by the loosing party. Except if the judge orders both sides to pay their own.
If you offer £10k settlement, and I refuse, and I win £5k, you’d have to give me £5k, plus pay my and your legal fees. What I don’t get to say is you offered £10k so I want that instead.
Hardly. Modest settlement offers to make a problem go away are very common, even when companies don't expect to lose.
Also, the difference between "expect to win" and "expect to lose" can be the difference between 49% and 51%. Civil cases turn on simple preponderance of the evidence.
It's more nuanced and squishy than that. Let's say I'm half way through litigation and we want to talk settlement.
I'm going to say something like "if we win, my client is going to get $6,000, and I'll have a claim for fees of $20,000 (based on my time in the claim so far)." So then I'm going to use that as a basis to make a settlement demand of $30,000.
And then we play negotiation ping pong. I'm likely going to discount the portion I attribute to my fees because they're uncertain (what if I lose?). And then the client ultimately makes an individualized decision wheter we settle and on what terms.
It depends. Settlements can stipulate anything. If you loose in court, you usually have to pay the winners legal fees, but the cap is what's laid out in the Rechtsanwaltsvergütungsgesetz and depends on the value of the dispute and other factors (how complicated the legal matter, ...). The winning party would still need to pay the share above that.
If you loose/win partially, the court decides on the share of cost that each party will need to pay.
The difference to the US system is that the potential costs of loosing a case can be determined pretty well in advance and that the other side cannot threaten to rack up infinite costs by racking up lawyer hours.
> edit: corrected the spelling of Rechtsanwaltsvergütungsgesetz
Victory is not guaranteed, and even if the victims do win, going to court takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. The victims agreed to the settlement because they preferred that option to going to court.
Mind you I don’t have any answers and I’m not intending on being adversarial. I just don’t immediately see how this can work.
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