Who is talking about taking the right to sue away? Like I said, sue whoever you want. The problem is that pigs like this Rice woman get ambulance chasers pounding her door down. They won't charge her a dime unless they win something which of course they know they will. So why not sue?
Because suing costs money. It costs money to hire experts who will determine that the kid had his hands in his pockets and Officer McShooty made the decision to shoot in less than a second after leaving the car.
If they lose, they are out all the time they spent preparing a case.
We need a deterrent to these lawsuits and loser pays all is the only thing that would work. If you can sue somebody or some company with no risk to yourself, why not? It's not going to cost you anything. If you knew that it might cost you a fortune, then you will make sure you have a legitimate claim before leveling such a suit.
Well, except it usually would cost me a fortune, and most lawyers will tell you if they have a reasonable chance of winning.
More to the point, granting effective immunity to lawsuits is how you get companies like Ford making the Pinto decision... that it as cheaper to pay off the people killed in the Barbeque that seats four than it would be to do a total recall and replace an $11.00 part.
I want companies and governments thinking through the possible consequences before they do some combination of evil and stupid thinking they can make a profit off of it.
I want the City of Cleveland to actually READ officer McShooty's resume and call his old boss before they hire him.
So what was the grand jury, not normal people?
YOu can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich. A line on just about every other episode of Law and Order. Grand Juries generally do what prosecutors tell them. So if they tell them, "Yup, Officer McShooty saw a gun, see, it's right here in this grainy still. Take our word for it." And they all wonder when the lunch bell is going to ring.
A civil trial, you have people arguing over the images, maybe analyzing them, maybe talking to witnesses like the kid's sister. Maybe we put Officer McShooty's old boss on the stand, and he can tell us how the guy was crying on the gun range.