Liability for Proceeding with Unfounded Litigation

Authors

John R. Jones, Jr.

First Page

743

Abstract

The important issues for this Note are the meaning of "good ground" and the nature of the sanctions available in a given case.One can conceive of many ways in which a pleading could lack good ground. At one extreme, -the attorney might know that the facts alleged were untrue."' Alternatively, the facts alleged, though not positively known to be untrue, might be based solely on speculation--as when the plaintiff, unsure who assaulted him, picked a name from the telephone directory on a hunch and sued that person." Between these egregious cases and the case in which the allegations have good ground by almost any definition lie innumerable gradations; at some point along this spectrum, the line of demarcation between lacking good ground and having good ground must be drawn. A separate but related question arises when the facts alleged, though not false or purely speculative, do not by any reasonable inference support the legal proposition on behalf of which they are offered."'

Recommended Citation

John R. Jones, Jr., Liability for Proceeding with Unfounded Litigation, 33 Vanderbilt Law Review 743 (1980)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol33/iss3/7