Carl Johnson

Between corporations maybe, but against a private plaintiff in a personal injury case? On the defendant side, an insurance company (which is actually the party in interest) handles hundreds and hundreds of cases, and each private plaintiff has one (we hope) during his or her lifetime. Correct and incorrect results average out for the insurance company, and in addition, insurance companies spend lots of money lobbying, and that weights the overall balance toward them, so that they are more likely to experience more unjust wins than unjust losses.

The injured plaintiff's one case, in which turns his chance for some semblance of a normal life, won't be followed by tens or hundreds of case over which an unjust loss will average out. Paying the insurance company's legal fees will cause him financial ruin, and such a scheme would stop many many winning cases from going forward because the plaintiff couldn't face the risk of ruin that would accompany an unjust loss.

What if there were no video of the Dao incident, and United and the Chicago Mall Cop Authority had held up their lies all through the case? Dr. Dao would have been afraid to bring the case, or else there is probably a more than 50% chance and I would say almost certainly a more than 10% chance that a jury would believe the defendants' lies and Dr, Dao would lose. Even with the video and the latest statements from United admitting they had no right to throw him off, I believe there is a greater than 10% chance that he would lose - I think a substantial number of Americans trust anybody who wears a shirt with "police" on it.