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Comment by poisonborz | Hacker News Reader

>> The case highlights India’s overloaded court system, where around 40m cases are clogging up the system. Legal cases have been known to take 10-15 years to reach a conclusion.

Most interesting tidbit for me. Is this really true?

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Yes, sadly this is true and one of the biggest bottlenecks in India. There are many ways (bribing and legal) to delay a case. I have known cases to last 20-30 years because more time will benefit one of the parties. For example if a rich person sues a poor person, lets say for an inherited property, the rich person benefits from making the case go longer. They dont even have to have a valid case, just after enough delays, the poor person is going to move on. Replace 'poor' above with any disadvantaged group.

Edit: The rich/powerful people give a return of their "winnings" to the judges/court-employees. This is one of the main reasons for delays on cases that can be easily closed.

I don't know about India, but it really is the case in less-developed countries. The sluggishness of the legal system is a catalyst to corruption - so anyone can do anything, and suing is useless because the case won't even be heard until years later.

The only way anyone is gonna get sued is because of such "stubborn" individuals that keep on going. But alas, a few individuals can't fix the whole system.

This is a main reason corporations choose Delaware. Fast predictable outcomes to litigation.

Yes. Part of the reason is that lower courts have a very lenient attitude towards no-shows that encourages continual postponement of cases. Any random excuse like "my lawyer has a stomach ache" will delay the hearing to the next date. It's then not a surprise that many folks use this to delay out of malice.

Yes. One of my friends is a lawyer in India.

He shared a story with me of a particular lawyer that ends up being paid millions of dollars per hour, because he's able to leverage his connections to help corporate clients jump to the front of the line.

Yes it is true, and this is just one small example which managed to get some news . Cases drag for years and years , there are hearings etc. Unless something gets in the news or fast tracked , legal battles seems never ending in most of the cases.

I am not sure about the 40m cases. But the 10-15 years is true. The civil cases in the country can drag on for a generation or more. I have personally witnessed one such case where the plaintiff has died of old age.

A lot of countries are like this, the main reason justice is swift in the US is the out-of-court settlement scheme where 95%-99% of the cases don’t reach trial.

Absolutely, a more interesting tidbit is this -

Telecom companies cannot take small subscribers to court in India. You don't pay your bills, they can send legal notices, but not much beyond that. We have ~1B+ subscribers. Even if a small percentage goes into dispute, our judicial system will completely collapse.

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