WhistlePig

Rickair7777 & USMCFLYER:

At first blush your idea seems reasonable. But lets explore a bit:

First, wealthy parties would be incentivized to always lie, cheat, and break the rules. If they get away with it, great. If not, they have not harmed their case and whatever punishment meted out for unethical behavior would be less than the current system. Otherwise there would be no need to separate the causes of action as you suggest.

Second, almost every litigation could now conceivably lead to entirely separate litigation, surely increasing and possibly doubling the caseload on the already burdened courts. This flies in the face of judicial efficiency, (which currently flies in the face of itself, but that's a separate issue).

Third, developing this new, separate claim of "bad behavior" would lead to duplicitous discovery and litigation expense and a very real possibility of the evidence becoming stale.

Fourth, The court overseeing the discovery phase is most familiar with the parties, the evidence, the briefs, and the relevant law. They are the best and most efficient finder of fact in these instances.

Finally, the deterrent value, perserving ethical duties, and maintaing the integrity of the judicial process is very important and cannot be overemphasized. In egregious examples such as this, preserving the judicial integrity, maintaing judicial efficiency, and punishing unethical attorneys and their clients is more important than seeking the truth.

An analogy of your hypo: You interview a young instructor, everything seems to be in order, and schedule an evaluation flight. The day before the evaluation flight, you discover that he falsified most of the entries in his logbook and although he may be barely qualified without the deception, he still lied to you and is untrustworthy. Can you cancel the evaluation flight and tell the mendacious scamp to pack sand?
Sorry, you can't. That's a separate issue with separate penalties but no penalty so extreme as termination or non-hiring. Under your hypo, you are compelled to go through with the evaluation and, if he performs well, you may be compelled to hire this person you do not trust and then pursue a separate remedy for the falsification, perhaps working for half pay for a few months, or cleaning the head for a year.

The current system places the burden on the harming party and the harming party's counsel. Accidental destruction of electronic evidence happens all the time. If it is immediately disclosed there is usually no problem. In most cases there are other ways to get the evidence and if it expensive, the harming party usually pays for it and litigation is not affected.
Lycoming on the other hand did a bad, bad thing. And they did it with full knowledge of the possible consequences. Lycoming took the case out of the arena of truth and thus made the case about their unethical actions instead of the actual cause.

Questions? Fire away!