A few months back Times of India stole a picture from my travel blog and even after repeatedly writing to them they refused to compensate me for the picture. I am still pursuing the case with agencies like PCI and if required will go to the court soon. Last 4 months have been an immense learning in terms of legal processes and the apprehensions that we as common people in India have in approaching the courts. I also came in touch with many individual professionals who are also fighting a similar battle with one or the other media house, and this idea comes from the collective helplessness of common citizens when they fight for their rights against a corporate giant or a government agency.
Idea is to have a law firm that can take up these cases for general public at no or some nominal cost but take a part of the compensation that the individual gets as per the court orders. Now I am not too sure about the legality of this but I know that a lot of people will be willing to share the compensation but are too scared to put in there good money after the money they have already lost in the process.
Given the number of such cases, the market potential of the idea is huge. You can bring in complete transparency by publishing these cases online and report on the progress made on them. Give the agencies an option to settle out of court if they and the client want, and still take your share of the compensation. There may be a risk associated to the extent that cases sometime can take a lot of time and your client may not get compensated at all, but I think the law of averages would work and numbers would work out eventually.
Can some lawyers reading this add to this idea or critique this idea?
