Words du Jour

Vexatious Litigation

Never heard the term before today. I just ran across it when looking up Dorothy Squires, a welsh singer who was once married to Roger Moore and blew a personal fortune taking him and others to court on irritating lawsuits.

It sure seems timely.

There are laws against this kind of thing. I think it has to do with the history of the vexatious litigant. How long have they been doing it? But does it have to be around the same issue or can it be a lifelong thing involving many legal actions?

IANAL, but someone might want to look into that. Vexatious litigants are prohibited from filing suits without having some kind of approval from the courts.

*********

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that shrinks have a term for this. It’s hyperlitigious behavior. Here’s a little more description of this malady:

Our initial conceptualization was that one route of emergence and maintenance of hyperlitigious behavior is the desire for attention and recognition. One might hypothesize that the woman in Case 2 was driven by such a desire and may have been experiencing what De Clérambault¹⁶ deemed a delusion of passion. However, the desire for attention can extend beyond a desire for attention from one person. Some hyperlitigious individuals seek attention on a larger scale. Our alternative explanation makes sense in light of the observation of Mullen and Lester¹² that many of these litigants seek public recognition for their willingness to struggle on behalf of others. There are several psychological syndromes that are characterized primarily by the need for attention. These disorders include histrionic personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and factitious disorder. Although hyperlitigious behaviors may be compared with each of these disorders, we drew the clearest comparisons between hyperlitigious persons and patients with factitious disorder.

Factitious disorder is a condition in which patients feign or exaggerate medical symptoms and seek help from medical professionals.¹⁷ Individuals with factitious disorders travel from medical facility to medical facility, presenting with complicated symptoms.²⁶ They do not seek external rewards for their behavior. They pursue being cared for by medical professionals by assuming the sick role, a sociological term that defines how individuals who have an illness should act and be treated by others.²⁷ These individuals benefit from assuming the sick role in society because of the societal expectation that sick individuals are to be cared for and nurtured back to health. In the context of factitious disorders, the sick role is typically thought to be one variant of the “victim role” which has also been referred to as “playing the victim” or “victim syndrome.”²⁸ Our initial impression of hyperlitigious litigants was that their behaviors signified a desire to reap the benefits of assuming the role of victim as well. We hypothesized that these individuals viewed themselves as victims of someone else’s negligence or wrongdoing and subsequently sought to receive sympathy or retribution for the hardships they faced, much as patients with factitious disorder seek sympathy and relief from their claimed symptoms.

Golly, who does THAT sound like?

Some descriptions are a little too on the nose.