Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

“I’m Batman!” “Here’s your subpoena.”

With the new Christian Bale/Heath Ledger Batman movie, “The Dark Knight,” opening at midnight tonight, it’s worth linking to our popular post of three years ago about how Gotham City must have had substantial tort reform to permit a sequel to go forward without Bruce Wayne being bankrupted…

(And I have to say that Stark Industries would be subject to similar shareholder lawsuits after “Iron Man” this year.)

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9 Comments

  • Dark Knight doesn’t open until next weekend.

    Can I sue you for that?

    • By tim

  • I can’t speak to the other stuff but with respect to the tort claim, there are no viable claims against Mr. Wayne and I don’t think any would be filed. The ridiculous suits that make headines are generally the exceptions.

    He has not asked for it but my best advice to Mr. Wayne would be to simply act as a reasonable prudent superhero would (see, e.g., the well behaved Superman). Just be reasonable, I would tell him, and you will be fine. That is not too much to ask.

  • You have put your finger on the true purpose of secret identities.

  • Batman has a secret identity and a secret lair. Unless you uncover his true identity, you can’t serve him with a subpoena or enforce a judgment against him. How would you levy against the batcave or the various bat gadgets if you can’t find them?

    The best you could do is recognize one of the bat gadgets as an earlier Wayne Industries prototype and then sue them for negligent entrustment.

    Although you could bring shareholder suits or prosecution against Wayne for his board of directors shenanigans, this has nothing to do with Batman so it isn’t really useful to the adversaries of Batman.

    • By Jim W

  • Tony Stark would get sued. Every time he has a car-tossing fight with a bad guy, expect billions of dollars in lawsuits. Not to mention the legal consequences of interfering with US combat operations by going into a war zone and blowing stuff up. And of course the shareholder lawsuits because he is keeping his suit and power generation technology secret instead of patenting it and turning it into valuable products.

    • By Jim W

  • You’d think that Stark Industries would lobby Congress pass legislation immunizing it, Tony Stark and Iron Man from suit for all damages arising from superhero-related activities.

    I’m sure Bruce Wayne could figure out a way to do the same without compromising his secret.

    • By E-Bell

  • This will lead to a whole new class of lawyers, Superhero liability, and eventually a hero and villain would rise out of no where to wage an epic battle. Im thinking “Make Them Whole” Man vs. The Tort Reformer

    Also, first poster, it opens in about 7 hours on the east coast, Im taking my baby bro to the midnight showing.

    • By Tracy

  • Anybody see “The Incredables”? Superheros were forced into hiding in kind of a witness protection program for this very reason.

  • I was embarrassed by my brethren in The Incredibles. But that was just a few rotten apples.