Legal threats

A Legal threat is when one person accuses another person of breaking the law, often with a threat of possible legal action. Legal threats are an important step in the legal process. Most court cases do not ever make it to court, and are resolved with discussions made that go over the legality or otherwise of the case. Legal threats are particularly important with regards to cases of libel, harassment and similar issues, whereby someone could have inadvertently broken the law but not meant to. A few places, including Wikipedia and related sites, prohibit legal threats with a rule of No legal threats, with often disastrous consequences, such as the John Seigenthaler Sr. incident.

Legal threats as a step in preventing libel or harassment

In ambiguous legal cases, whereby someone could have inadvertently broken the law, such as libel and harassment, it is a legal requirement that prior to prosecution, the person who has committed the offence is given a reasonable chance to undo their damage. In the case of harassment, they must be advised that they are harassing the victim and given a reasonable chance to stop it, in order for prosecution to be successful. In the case of libel, they must be advised that what they have written is accused of being defamatory and given a reasonable opportunity to take the information down. In the case of slander, they must be given the chance to make a formal apology. Many other cases have similar requirements.

If the victim is forbidden from giving the culprit appropriate warning, then the culprit cannot be prosecuted and instead whoever is stopping the legal threat needs to be prosecuted first. This can add unnecessary complication to a legal issue, and in effect it encourages illegal actions. Sites such as Wikipedia who have No Legal Threats rules are in effect encouraging illegal activities, which is a dangerous statute.

Legal threats as a way to stop further harm

In many cases, simply describing to a person that what they are doing is illegal is enough to shock them into stopping whatever they are doing. This can be true for cases of sexism, racism and a wide variety of different crimes. An employer who is trying to discriminate against an employee may stop the discrimination if they are given documents that threaten them with legal action.

In so doing, both sides win. The victim wins because whatever was being done stops. The culprit wins because they don't have to go to court.

Many unions support their members by writing legal threats to employers as a part of the service.

Legal threats as a negative

Legal threats can be used for negative reasons. Legal threats against doctors can lead to doctors refusing to perform surgery. Legal threats and pointless legal prosecutions can lead to doctors having to have indemnity clauses. Legal threats against companies can lead to them having to have huge public liability insurances. It can all cost a lot of money.

Whilst summary legal prosecutions are mostly a problem in USA, and it is the prosecutions rather than the threats themselves that are the problem, nonetheless because of Americocentric ideas this is used by some Americans to apply to everywhere, even though it is actually only a problem in 1 country in the whole world, and even though it is legal actions (and the surrounding laws that only exist in USA) that are the problem, not the legal threats themselves.

Legal threats as a crime in themselves

In some cases legal threats can be a crime. For example, someone who writes that what someone else has done is illegal, when it clearly was not, can be libel in some cases. The legal threat itself is not illegal, but continuing to keep the legal threat in a published form can be illegal.