An Act relating to civil liability for certain false or improper allegations in a civil pleading or for certain improper acts relating to a civil action; amending Rule 82(b), Alaska Rules of Civil Procedure; and providing for an effective date.

House Bill 42 will prevent frivolous lawsuits by requiring parties to the lawsuit and their attorneys to be truthful and responsible in their pleadings. This bill discourages false statements and claims in litigation and encourages responsibility by all parties and their attorneys. It requires more careful and focused preparation and presentation of pleadings.

This bill creates an obligation, in statute, for litigants and attorneys to make reasonable efforts to assure those claims have a probability of succeeding. If the claim is knowingly and recklessly false, both the attorney and the party can be assessed damages. Currently, there is no effective way of holding parties responsible for frivolous pleadings or claims. Frivolous pleadings and claims increase the costs of litigation for all the parties involved. They also increase the cost of our judicial system.

House Bill 42 requires attorneys as well as their clients to research their claims to assure they are factually supported before filing a lawsuit. This bill will eliminate "boiler plate" pleadings in lawsuits and encourages responsible and focused pleadings. "Boiler plate" pleadings include everything anyone could ever imagine could have happened rather than focusing on those specific issues that actually did happen. Those extraneous pleadings are expensive to litigate and work through and are most often thrown out. They simply cause one party, and the court system, to expend significant dollars to pare down to real issues.

Many suits are often less expensive to settle than to litigate, regardless of their merit. This bill does not affect suits filed in good faith. It will, however, have a significant deterrent effect on those without merit. A system that allows deceit to be rewarded must be changed. This is not why we have and support a judicial system.

This bill assigns financial liability to those who:

• File suits without sufficient probable cause,
• Provide false information,
• Use claims and cross claims to cloud the issues and
• File unsuccessful claims on the hope of finding someone, somewhere willing to settle rather than spend the dollars to litigate the suit.

The trier of fact, usually a jury, will make the determination whether the untrue information presented was intentional and material. If honest errors are made, there will be no sanctions.

A jury can make these decisions and the deterrent effect of this bill will reduce those cases that are inappropriate without inhibiting the filing of cases believed to have merit.