U.S. judges say frivolous lawsuits not on the rise

The filing of frivolous lawsuits is not a significant problem, according to a survey of U.S. federal court judges.
The survey, taken by the Federal Judicial Center, was intended to assess the appropriateness of “Rule 11” of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which allows judges to impose sanctions at their discretion on lawyers or parties who present groundless cases in district court. The U.S. Congress had been looking at amending the current Rule 11 (last amended in 1993) to further reduce lawsuit abuse.
In all 85% of the judges surveyed say groundless litigation is only a “small problem”, which 12% say it is a moderate problem. Only 3% say it is a large or very large problem.
At the same time, 54% of respondents say the number of groundless actions has remained stable during their tenure, while 19% say the frequency of lawsuit abuse has dropped. Only 7% say the problem is growing and 12% say there never was a problem at all.
Most judges supported keeping Rule 11 “as is”, rather than implementing such changes as mandatory sanctions, mandatory attorney fee awards or applying Rule 11 to discovery disputes.