I'm gonna sue you, Man

While the trend is slowly rising back in the Netherlands, the USA remains the undisputed land of lawsuits. On any given day, there are hundreds of them—small claims, massive corporate battles, and the infamous class action suits.

And guess what? Ever since I moved to the US, we’ve already been eligible for three of them.

One we decided not to bother with, one is currently ongoing and involves a local chemical spill, and the newest one involves a doctor's malpractice. Are we going to be rich now? Probably not. It’s not just us; thousands of people join these suits. If something actually comes out of it, we’ll likely get a check for a few dollars. The only ones getting a real paycheck here are the lawyers.

On the surface, the upside of all this is that you can always seek your day in court. And conceptually, you should be able to. But it comes at a massive cost—one you pay every single day of your life.

Since lawyers have to be paid somehow (even on a "no win, no fee" basis, where you might still be on the hook for court fees), those risks get factored into everything else. You see it directly in what you pay for basic services.

Medical costs here are ridiculously high, as are all forms of insurance. Back home, I paid about $30 a month for my car insurance. Over here, I pay four times as much. Home insurance is no different—it easily runs two to three times higher here than back in the Netherlands.

Right now, I have to get another medical exam for my green card application because, somehow, the paperwork for the first one got lost. That starts at a $450 base rate just for the basic checkup—the classic “cough please, breathe deep, and tap on the knee” kind—plus a form to fill out. From there, the price climbs depending on whatever additional shots or tests they decide you need. It always seems like they find something extra for you to pay for, which is ironic considering most green card applicants don't even have a US job or income yet.

And the weirdest part? I had this exact same exam done by another official civil surgeon just three months ago. But due to what I can only assume are liability issues, doctors here don't even trust their own colleagues—so they have to redo the entire expensive process from scratch themselves.

Last year, we got rear-ended while driving. It wasn't my fault, but I was amazed at how the insurance system handled it. On top of paying for the actual physical damage to the car, the insurance company immediately paid out money for "pain and suffering."

Everyone has seen the news bulletins about the insane, eye-watering amounts people can win from certain American lawsuits. In the Netherlands, the absolute highest "smartegeld" payout you could possibly get is capped at around €250,000—and trust me, to get that, you need to have suffered something catastrophic, like full paralysis, a coma, or lifelong total disability. Here in America, that same tragedy would easily net you millions, even after the lawyers take their massive cut.

The whole legal system seems designed to either help people or make life as bureaucratic as possible to prevent people from suing. We see it in every legal TV show, though those always seem to lean heavily toward getting the underdog his heroic share of the pie. And I'll be honest, I do love it when one clever lawyer outsmarts the rest of the courtroom—the movie My Cousin Vinny springs to mind, especially now that I live in a place where people actually eat grits for breakfast!

My Dutch mindset—where if you don’t pay attention and hurt yourself, it’s simply your own fault—now has to switch to a world where if someone slips on some freshly mowed grass I left on my driveway, I am legally liable.

Back in Europe, we used to laugh at the huge warning texts accompanying every tool or object you buy in the US:

"Caution: Contents Hot" on coffee cups
"Do not iron clothes while wearing them"
"Do not use hairdryer while showering"
"Contains: Peanuts" on an actual bag of peanuts
And the one that would make me laugh if it wasn’t so sad, on a children's Superman costume: "Cape does not enable user to fly."
Or my personal favorites: Christmas lights labeled "For indoor or outdoor use only," and tampons with the explicit instruction: "Remove used tampon before inserting a new one."

Where Dutch people usually rely on simple boerenverstand (common sense), the American art of suing has resulted in a staggering overload of warnings. If I cut my finger because I used a chainsaw wrong, that’s my bad—not something to sue the manufacturer over. Just like anyone can imagine that fresh cut grass on a concrete driveway might be slippery, so you should probably act accordingly.

It’s a bizarre system to adjust to: a place where you're constantly one step away from joining a class action suit, while simultaneously sweeping your driveway just to keep the delivery guy from suing you!