This bill discourages false statements in litigation and encourages responsibility by all parties and their attorneys. It requires more careful and focused preparation and presentation of pleadings. This bill creates an obligation for litigants and attorneys to make reasonable efforts to assure that claims have a probability of succeeding. If the claim is knowingly or recklessly false, both the attorney and the party can be assessed damages. Currently, there is no effective way of holding parties responsible for frivolous pleadings.
Frivolous pleadings increase the costs of litigation for the parties involved.
They also increase the cost of our judicial system. HB 31 requires attorneys as well as their clients to research their claims to assure they are factually supported before filing a suit. These extraneous pleadings are expensive to work through and are most often thrown out. They simply cause one party, and the court system, to expend significant dollars to pare filing down to real issues. Many suits are often less expensive to settle than litigate, regardless of their merit.