American Rule

  

Wasn't this the slogan as we Manifest Destiny'd? Hm. Maybe not.

Perhaps unintentionally, this rule encourages spurious litigation by requiring each party in a lawsuit to pay its own attorneys’ fees (as opposed to “English Rule,” which requires the losing party to pay both sides’ legal fees, increasing the downside of bringing, losing, a frivolous claim).

So if you, or someone who owes you a big favor, are a lawyer, consider suing a corporate giant like McDonald’s for negligence because they served you hot coffee that burned you. Odds are that Mickey D’s legal costs for a trial would outweigh yours and you may get a settlement for an amount somewhere in the middle of those two amounts. Win-win.

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Finance: What is a Safe Harbor?3 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop what is a safe harbor provisions All

00:07

right well here's a dangerous harbor and here's a safe

00:11

one Yeah ok so now apply the notion to finance

00:14

land it's not all that different Safe harbor simply means

00:17

that if you follow a basic set of rules you

00:20

can not be found guilty of doing a crime or

00:23

otherwise shady dealings as you live under those safe harbor

00:28

rules Well the most famous safe harbor situation in recent

00:32

times and certainly as it applies to shmoop came with

00:34

the myriad lawsuits of copyright protection as more or less

00:39

all of the valuable content of the world was stolen

00:42

and posted on youtube napster and a whole bunch of

00:45

other peer to peer networks Well caught in the middle

00:47

where the internet service providers comcast tea and dozens of

00:51

others who allowed joe six pack to connect to the

00:54

internet and download you know blurry art films in order

00:58

to sort out the legal situation the government granted safe

01:02

harbor provisions to those internet providers such that if it

01:07

had been deemed that youtube did in fact steal the

01:11

guts of the entertainment industry or provide the gun weaponry

01:14

It's for joe six pack to do so and essentially

01:17

helped bankrupt the music industry And then they lost a

01:20

fifty billion dollar lawsuit Well then on ly google who

01:24

owns youtube would be liable The internet service providers like

01:28

comcast and at and t were granted safe harbour protections

01:33

inside of those lawsuits and they still percolate every now

01:36

and then Again you know today so comcast and att

01:39

and t basically had a safe harbour built around them

01:43

by whole bunch of government lawyers that allowed them to

01:46

continue streaming on the internet and providing internet stuff to

01:50

the masses And had the government not provided that safe

01:53

harbor well it might've made sense for comcast and t

01:56

to just shut down and stop internet service to the

01:59

masses is and then everyone would have lost And you

02:01

know that would have been a bad thing right Right

02:03

Well the bottom line there will always be storms and

02:05

there will always be a need for safe harbors wherever

02:08

you go although you can never be too safe when 00:02:11.163 --> [endTime] there are sharks in the water Yeah

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