Those Pesky Lawsuits

You hear it in the news all the time: ridiculous lawsuits granting “victims” millions of dollars for trivial grievances. Conversely, you hear of rich people getting away with crimes that would result in poor people going to jail. The Bible has some interesting answers to each such injustice.

This sentiment can also be found in Ex. 23:1-9, Deut. 1:16-18, Deut 16:18-20.

Our justice system is a far cry from this ideal. Injustice is meted out to both rich and poor because we do not obey this principle.

I have listened to judges running for office. They generally say nothing but platitudes in order to avoid prejudicing future cases. But one of the favorite platitudes is that they will judge the person instead of the crime. This is in direct violation of the above stricture. According to the Bible, punishment should be based on the crime, not the person’s background. An upstanding member of society should get the same treatment as someone from the ghetto. Whether someone had a bad childhood should have nothing to do with it. Ditto for prior convictions. Whether a crime was part of a fraternity prank or part of a criminal career should be irrelevant. If the mandated punishment is too much for the frat boy, then it is too much for the gang member.

Similarly, we have punitive damage law which sets fines based on ability to pay vs. damage done. The result is that large corporations get pounded with huge lawsuits from people trying to make a buck. The result is more expensive products, richer lawyers and a few huge winners in the legal lottery.

Yes, I know it looks like it takes a bigger punishment to make a bigger entity take action, but that is not taking into account the greater vulnerability of a bigger entity. For example, McDonald’s was fined heavily for serving excessively hot coffee. According to the above principle, a local diner should be fined the same amount as McDonald’s for each person burned by excessively hot coffee. Yes, McDonald’s could pay such a fine trivially, but there would be still a deterrence on McDonald’s in that they serve a lot more coffee, and are thus subject to more lawsuits.

On the other hand, many poor people are denied justice because the complexity and expense of our legal system. One reason why a huge corporation like McDonald’s is not actually vulnerable to thousands of lawsuits when they do something wrong is that they can “spam” the system with endless appeals and the like. The proper solution, however, is not to really hammer the big corporations when they do lose, but to keep the system simple enough that all have access to it.

Still, for damage to human life and limb, a proportional set of monetary payments does not work. If we make the payments too big, then small offenders get hit too hard. Further, we create a lawsuit happy society where people try to cash in on their grievances. On the other hand, if we make the payments too small, the rich and powerful can endanger others with impunity.

The Biblical solution to this quandary is both interesting and disturbing:

Manslaughter was by default a death penalty offense. Causing injury was an offense that required similar injury. It is one thing to sue for money, quite another to sue for retaliatory injury or even death.

However, there were circumstances where the modern punitive damages were allowed. (Ex 21 again):

Perhaps the ox goring scenario is the proper precedent for the modern coffee cup scenario. If so, then the court could assess punitive damages as was done, and if those responsible considered the monetary damages excessive, then they could refuse the ransom and opt for “eye for eye”, in this case subjecting themselves to the hot coffee treatment.

But note that elsewhere the idea of monetary compensation for life is deprecated:

Monetary punishment is not worthy for the loss of a life, even in the case of manslaughter.

But there was an alternative to death for manslaughter: the cities of refuge. They are described in detail in Numbers 35. I will have you look it up since the quote is long. The basic idea is that someone guilty of manslaughter could be legally killed by an “avenger,” presumably a member or agent of the victims family. However, if the one who committed manslaughter were to flee to one of six cities of refuge, he could not legally be killed unless proven to be an intentional murderer. But this protection only applied as long as the manslayer stayed in the city of refuge. This condition lasted until the death of the chief priest, so I presume that this averaged out as a decade or two. After the death of the chief priest, this internal exile ended and the manslayer could safely return home.

I do think we ought to consider at least some variations on these ideas for modern application. Our legal system is torn several different ways regarding risky behaviors. We hesitate to fully harm those who cause harm due to their recklessness; eye for eye seems barbaric to most these days. But because of this, we end up with a slew of safety regulations and laws that are very confining. By taking away full responsibility, we lose significant amounts of freedom.

The city of refuge concept is an interesting alternative to fines or outright imprisonment for accidental deaths caused by reckless behavior, such as drunk driving. Our system of safety regulation is not objective. Different people lose different amounts of driving skills due to blood alcohol levels. Some impaired drivers properly drive slowly and carefully when impaired. They are no more dangerous than the aged who are just as impaired when sober. On the other hand, some people drive more aggressively when drunk; they are the truly dangerous. By having a real punishment, drinkers can judge for themselves what is safe and take true responsibility for their choices. Exile to a city of refuge is a punishment that modern juries should be able to stomach, so the threat of such punishment would be real. Accidental death could be punished by a “life sentence” of such exile – on the order of 20 years or more. Lesser damages could result in shorter terms.