Litigation as a Negotiation Tactic

Almost all the time... especially for "little people"... filing a lawsuit is a sure way to END negotiation. At that point, the lawyers take over, and you are normally in for an expensive, time consuming... and very public spectacle. Maybe sometime down the road, the lawyers themselves will settle the matter using negotiation, but the litigation expenses (lawyer's time, depositions, interrogatories, requests for production, requests for examination, court motions, etc.)... the time wasted... and the public records... all will remain. Given human nature, the chances of these parties ever voluntarily doing business again in the future is pretty much nil.

So, as a general rule, if you NEVER want to do business again with someone, file a lawsuit!

But there can be exceptions...

Sometimes major corporations, with extremely deep financial pockets, can USE lawsuits as part of their negotiation tactics and strategy. The idea (if you have plenty of money) is to use litigation to pressure your opponent into settling or into getting a better deal than you otherwise would get without the litigation. In this case, you are using litigation as an adjunct to your normal negotiation tactics. In essence, you are running two tracks in parallel... an ongoing negotiation track.... and, of course, a separate litigation track.

See for example... Google Decides To Fight Back Rough Against Viacom.

All this is fine, but when two financial giants do battle in a public court of law, should taxpayers subsidize the filing fees and other court expenses in this contest of giant corporate egos? (Court filing fees, in the US, are generally the same for everyone, rich and poor alike.) Or should the rules be amended so that when a giant corporation files a lawsuit, it has to pay proportionately higher court filing fees based upon its market capitalization?

What do YOU think about this?