In many countries, it is illegal for lawyers to charge a percentage of the obtained damages. But in the US, a lawyer can propose: "I'll help you suing this bastard for free if I get half of the awarded damages." This incentivizes US lawyers to be more confrontational and to seek higher damages than anywhere else.
Edit, found this: "FinCEN today assessed a $110 million civil money penalty against BTC-e for willfully violating U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) laws. Alexander Vinnik was assessed $12 million for his role in the violations." In the US, government agencies can keep such fines for themselves, providing them with a nice incentive to go after such cases.
> But in the US, a lawyer can propose: "I'll help you suing this bastard for free if I get half of the awarded damages." This incentivizes US lawyers to be more confrontational and to seek higher damages than anywhere else.
But it also gives poor people a chance to sue someone big, because their lawyer isnt asking for a fixed fee.
Yes. My friend is a Canadian lawyer who does class action lawsuits. When it's a big corp screwing over thousands or millions of customers, usually none of the customers can afford or are willing to front the money to fight Big Corp in court. So they take a cut of the winnings instead. (There are special loans and insurance they can get for this sort of thing.)
It's not clear what exactly the outcome is in this case, but in many civil cases the US Treasury uses the penalties to repay the original injured parties. It generally doesn't cover all their losses.
Edit, found this: "FinCEN today assessed a $110 million civil money penalty against BTC-e for willfully violating U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) laws. Alexander Vinnik was assessed $12 million for his role in the violations." In the US, government agencies can keep such fines for themselves, providing them with a nice incentive to go after such cases.