They’re at it again! The food-extremists are flooding are courts with more frivolous lawsuits – and the LA Times is on their trail! Its editorial “Fringe Food Lawsuits” shows how the court system is being exploited to drive an agenda for a group's political gain. The plaintiff’s intent here is simply a publicity stunt to drive attention to its issue. As I blogged in July, this isn’t the first time a fringe group group has clogged our courts to advance its cause. For just $240, anyone can walk into a courtroom and file a lawsuit costing the defendant lots of money to defend itself and even more grief to undue the harm inflicted by an unwarranted lawsuit. It’s a terrible loophole that threatens all of us.

The Times editorial was reasonable, thoughtful and very welcome. Indeed, many lawsuits seeking food warnings are merely publicity stunts advanced by extremists. Our society is moving too far toward regulating everything and letting common sense and personal responsibility fall by the wayside. However, I would add that using the court system to generate publicity has an additional negative effect. Frivolous lawsuits impose an unnecessary financial burden on private businesses. Additionally, whenever an abusive lawsuit is filed, whether that meritless action seeks media attention, personal vindication, or is just pointless, our court system must initiate processing the filing, preparing a legal response, scheduling court time and all the other preparations we require for legitimate cases. Even if a lawsuit never goes to trial, there are still costly arrangements required of our overburdened legal system – paid for by taxpayers.

I don’t object to advocates seeking the public’s attention – but our state, and every other state for that matter, certainly does need some means of discouraging pointless legal cases that consume valuable public resources.