Courts throughout the country handle scores of cases on a regular day, ranging from routine charges to landmark hearings. However, there are instances that the court receives a litigation that is so out-of-depth that it wastes the court's time and resources. These instances refer to a frivolous litigation, a kind of lawsuit, charge, or claim that lacks legal merit but is nonetheless submitted to the court for consideration.
There are many factors to help courts identify when a litigation is frivolous. A number of the most prominent ones are listed below.
Legal Fantasies
The first and most prominent factor for a frivolous claim is the lack of legal grounds to support the claim. This could either be due to the improper interpretation of a particular law, the citation of an outdated or unadopted law or amendment, or plain ignorance of established legal statutes. In extreme cases, the litigant adopts an absurd method of interpreting the law in the belief that it shields them from the effects of said law. Methods like specific capitalization, selective reading of court opinions on similar cases, and outright rejection of state and federal institutions as illegitimate are commonplace for frivolous litigants.
Outrageous Motions
These kinds of frivolous cases not only lack any legal merit but fly in the face of fact and common sense. Such kinds of litigation range from filing motions that are not recognized in any competent court of law, utilizing excess legal jargon even in the improper context, requesting extreme remedies for relatively minor crimes, or suing another party based on trivial, unrelated, or imagined matters. For example, a case where a customer sues a restaurant for failing to live up to a 'satisfaction guaranteed' motto and asking millions of dollars in damages payment can be considered frivolous due to the excess damages and the trivial 'offense' incurred.
Bad Faith
Some frivolous motions are not filed for their own merits. Often, there are frivolous lawsuits filed that are intentionally detrimental to another party, or to the court itself. These so-called 'bad faith' lawsuits aim to harass or embarrass the other party into cowering to their demands or leaving them be to pursue their unlawful actions. In many cases, bad faith lawsuits are filed to shut down the operations of the court or other government entity via a series of false and frivolous claims. Common bad faith litigants include tax protestors and anti-government entities who do not recognize state and Federal institutions and who only respect county-level law. Because of how such frivolous claims clog up the legal system and operational capability of government institutions, such actions are often called collectively as paper terrorism.
People should not take frivolous litigation lightly, even if most of the time they end up to be absurd and inconsequential. Conversely, don't let yourself become enjoined to a legal action that will end up being frivolous in the end. Always consult with a competent criminal defense lawyer before making any filings in court.