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by Mickydtron 3886 days ago
This seems like a broken patch to a broken system. To use the main example from the article, Cat would crush Miller if Miller didn't have access to this method of financing their lawsuit, and Miller's lawsuit looks at least plausible, so them being crushed out of hand is a bad outcome. So, it does somewhat fix the problem of smaller litigants being able to go up against larger defendants without just being automatically crushed out of hand.

However, it does seem that there are some obvious failure states for this new system. If venture litigation becomes the norm, then only litigants who are either extremely large themselves or can attract financing will even have a chance of victory. So, the financiers become the de facto arbiters of the judicial system.

To me, the real problem is that the civil justice system is so expensive as to be out of reach for many/most people, or at least putting a limit on how big a size difference the two parties can have. All told, this isn't that different than someone taking out a mortgage to fund a lawsuit, and that is fairly obviously allowed. The fact that someone might need to take a mortgage or seek outside funding in order to seek justice is the problem, not the mortgage or financing itself.