Well, in Germany the solution is the standard rate for lawyers. When you loose a court case, you do have to pay the loosers costs. But only the hours they spent in court or drafting actual legal documents related to the case, no the lunch break where the lawyer bought ice cream.

There is also a limit in discovery, so you can't drag court cases on forever as you want.

So even if you, as a small SMB, get sued by Twitter, and you only bring your off-the-street lawyer and Twitter brings their 12-headed star team of lawyers, you won't pay more than double your lawyer's bill if you loose in terms of legal fees.

I'm thinking of the Mclibel lawsuit. McDonald's couldn't scare their defendants off because they were "men of straw".

The UK is far worse than the US when it comes to libel law: if a big company sues, the burden of proof is on the individual sued to document every statement. In the US, the plaintiff has the burden of proving that the statements were false and damaging.

yeah, but is is much harder for plaintiffs to collect in the UK than in the US. Losing a lawsuit in the UK is not nearly as bad as losing one in the US because the Uk has really crappy asset recovery procedures. The US requires losers to disclose everything under the penalty of perjury.

It might be more difficult to collect, but there is an undue burden on the individual when the court tries to determine the truth of the matter.

Exactly, thanks.