Multiple lawsuits by the same persons filed for personal reasons.
More lawsuits are burdening the Federal Court system. In at least some cases, the plaintiffs are the same from case to case. And they are clearly intentionally filing their lawsuits one issue at a time.
The lawsuits involve challenges to the Affordable Care Act a/k/a Obamacare. The latest issue they raise is whether the Federal Government has authority to subsidize poor people who sign up for health care.
The latest wave of one-issue-at-a-time litigiousness raises two questions:
- Where do these plaintiffs come from?
- And who is funding these lawsuits?
The plaintiffs seem to be recruited. According to reporting in today's New York Times, a person "at the American Enterprise Institute, convened a forum to explore legal avenues to undo the health law." That forum was three (3) years ago, in December, 2010. See Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "A New Wave of Challenges to Health Law" p. A1, col. 6 (New York Times Nat'l ed., Tuesday, December 3, 2013). These lawsuits have been filed, one at a time, ever since.
One of the plaintiffs in a current lawsuit reportedly was a plaintiff in the lawsuit that lost in the Supreme Court last year, challenging the individual mandate in the Act. Now, the same plaintiff is challenging the Federal authority to subsidize poor people under the Act. He is reportedly the only owner of "a carpet and flooring store" in West Virginia -- but he has no employees. See Stolberg, New York Times, supra.
Part of the answer to the second question, who is funding this litigation, is that taxpayers are paying for these lawsuits. In one such lawsuit, for example, the taxpayers of Indiana and Oklahoma are paying the legal bills -- so that they instead do not have to pay any part of health insurance for poor people under the Act, I suppose is the thinking.
But that is not the whole answer to the second question, who is funding these lawsuits. Reportedly, besides the taxpayers of Indiana and Oklahoma, "business owners and individual consumers" are similarly responsible for paying the legal bills as plaintiffs in a lawsuit to block subsidies for health insurance for poor people.
Are these people paying their own legal bills?
If they are not paying their own legal bills, who is paying their legal bills?
If the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in these cases are representing them pro bono, so that there would be no bills for legal services, there would still be costs. Who is paying the costs -- which, ethically, no lawyer can pay for people to sue other people? (Otherwise, lawyers could churn up lawsuits, recruit plaintiffs, and pay the way, which is ethically prohibited -- for lawyers.)
These are all good questions, and there are more good questions. Let's have a start with answering these questions, litigants, if you would be so kind.
Otherwise, without answers, we are left to believe that you are PINTOS: Plaintiffs in Named Technicality Only.
© 2013 by Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved. No claim to original U.S. Government works.
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