IDEA - Sue Me Foundation

I can't tell you the number of times in our married life that my wife and I have had legal troubles with people who commit egregious wrong-doing with impunity, because they know that we don't have the financial means to go after them in court.

We sold a house to a man who wouldn't release $2,000 in escrowed funds after the closing and dared us to sue him to get the money. We ended up settling for less than half the money because the court costs and attorney's fees ate up the rest.

We rented a house to a friend (ex-friend) who skipped out on the rent and told us that we could sue him, but there would be no way to enforce the order since he was moving out of state.

We sold a business to a gentleman who breached several important terms in the contract and told us "sue me, you're moving out of state and it will cost you a fortune to get your money back -- even if you win."

In each of these cases, we could have spent the money on an attorney and the time in court and perhaps after years of aggravation and expense we could have won. But the risk was too high and we felt that the focus of our lives should not be litigation.

I wish there was a non-profit legal foundation formed for the purpose of going after these scofflaws. I would have gladly donated my rights in these (and other) cases to the foundation and let them use their lawyers to get these bad guys.

With a staff of attorneys and a reputation for honesty and ferocity, perhaps the bad guys wouldn't mess with them so easily. They could easily be funded by their winnings in the court room.

Sure I wouldn't have received any benefit from the cases - but I didn't anyway. At least this way I would have the satisfaction of knowing that the nice guy didn't always finish last.