Legal Question in Civil Litigation in Virginia
What can be done about a person running amok, filing frivolous lawsuits by the d
The actual story is complicated, doesn't fit here. The bottom line is, that a person (a doctor) in our area, as a result of being fired from a hospital (employment and medical staff), now running amok, filing (now over 30) lawsuits about other doctors, hospitals, lawyers, newspapers, radio stations (mostly pro se, but found one lawyer who helps him in some of the cases). Additionally, he approaches former patients of some doctors and talks them into suing the doctors (done in several cases).
Everybody knows that he is ''crazy'', to say the least. Yet, nobody seems to declare on the legal side that the ''king is naked'', every case is being run through the system, as if it was a genuine claim. Dozens of people must spend signigicant sums of money to defend themselves. One federal judge already slapped him with $5000 penalty related to one specific case (for frivolous litigation), but the rest of us are sitting here, trying to figure out, how can such person be stopped from perpetuating such outrage.
There is no question about the cases being totally absurd. Example:I was the target of one malpractice case which I refused to settle, went to trial, jury came back in 14 minutes to rule in my favor. Out of space.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: What can be done about a person running amok, filing frivolous lawsuits by t
You and all the others probably have valid actions against that person for defamation, abuse of process and malicious prosecution. Question is whether it's worth it to file suit. There's no such thing as a class action in Virginia, but if a number of affected persons file as joint plaintiffs, that's likely to have an impact. Otherwise, what happened in one case is irrelevant to what happened in another. There's also economy of scale to consider.
Problem is, suppose you get a judgment against that person, how do you expect them to pay you?
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