That is because in USA you pay your lawyers. In other countries, if you loose, you have to pay the lawyers of the other part.
Just another example where the USA needs improvement and is not the best in the world.
The issue is that lawsuits are often not obvious. There's almost always a non-trivial risk of losing. Therefore, in a universal "loser pays" system, it's even riskier for a poor (or even middle-class) person to sue a company given that they could be responsible for bankruptcy-level legal fees if they lose.
Which is a risk worth taking if someone is suing for the right reasons and it's a once in a decade matter of major importance. That or they're fairly sure they'll win the case.
The simple[1] solution to that would be “loser pays if they spent more”. Which might seem odd at first glance (why punish the loser even more?), but would align the incentives in the right direction.
[1] Read: I haven't put much thought into ways this could be abused
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/30/legal-systems-very-dif...
The article title’s a play on David Friedman’s book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30066446 (I haven’t read this but sounds interesting)
It was my understanding that pro-bono is under rate or free services, correct me if I'm wrong. I think the terminology you're looking for is 'contingent', where the client only pays a % fee to attorney if they manage to generate a judgement. In this case, does the UK insurance kick in to pay a fee to lawyer if they lose the case?
I'm talking about civil cases here, not criminal.
A friend of mine had a law firm take their (civil) case on a contingency basis and there was an insurance policy to cover the lawyer’s time in case they lost.
I don’t know if that’s good or bad. It gives an insurance company a very large say in matters of justice.
But insurance is one of the wonders of the modern world.
I think it would do the reverse. Even if you and your lawyers think you have a good case, there is no guarantee that you will win. If you sue and lose, you have to pay for the other guy's legal fees? Poor people would never be able to risk it.
It also creates specific problems, and a big one is that it can make it hard for normal people to hold large companies accountable for bad behavior when not a ton of money is at stake in each individual case. But that’s probably best addressed by other means.
In the US, a court can award court costs and legal fees to the winning party but they're unlikely to do so unless the case is clearly frivolous and harassing. Which isn't unreasonable because otherwise individuals could basically never afford to take on the risk of suing a company because, were they to lose, they'd be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
The court system is busy and not very sympathetic to parties that waste the courts time. You need to have an actual dispute that needs the court system to resolve.
If a business is stonewalling you and rebuffing you at every reasonable attempt to resolve an issue, you are highly likely to get your costs paid for, especially if that business has no leg to stand on. If your initial complaint documents page after page of your attempts to solve the problem outside of the court system, the judge is probably going to be extremely unforgiving to the other side.
Why the difference? Because out of these 20k, you maybe need 15 to live. For a 1B company, the "need to live" is probably much lower. This is similar to how income tax brackets work in Europe.
In USA I thought you could counter sue for your lawyer fees if you win? Is that not true?