It'd be great if trial by combat was an option for this sort of thing. I'd like nothing more than to hack the arms off of people who raise these lawsuits.
I particularly liked this quote: "[I]t's reasonable to expect to find a large number of retained legal representatives under a legal system in which people feel that their property rights are constantly threatened by rent-seeking litigiousness or in which rampant rent-seeking opportunity gives them an incentive to behave litigiously themselves. The rarity of retained champions in medieval England therefore suggests that rent seeking under trial by battle wasn't rampant."
In December 2002, a 60-year-old mechanic named Leon Humphreys was fined £25 for failing to notify the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency that he had removed his Suzuki motorcycle from road usage. He refused to pay and claimed that he had the right, under medieval law, to choose a trial by combat with a "champion" nominated by the DVLA. This claim was denied by a court of magistrates in Bury St Edmunds, and he was further fined.
The United States inherited its common law traditions from the English system after it declared its independence in 1776, with precedents before that date entrenched in the American jurisprudence, as the Rule in Shelley's Case in property law has. The British, however, did not abolish wager by battle until 1819 after Ashford v Thornton, as noted above, and since independence no court in the United States has addressed the issue of whether this remains a valid alternative to a civil action under the law.
