A common tactic is to bury your opponent in the threat of heavy damages or jail-time to get them to settle for what you were originally after, which courts are perfectly happy to facilitate because it gets a potentially lengthy trial off their dockets.
That's not how litigation actually works in this country. Unless the plaintiff can actually prove damages, there's no threat of "heavy" damages. The primary economic concern is spending a lot of money on legal fees, which is the primary trigger for getting businesses to settle instead of litigate. It doesn't work so well against people though.
They'll punish (or be biased against) whichever party seems responsible for not accepting a "reasonable" settlement.
That is false and any judge caught doing that would be removed from the bench, immediately. The judge does not exercise any judgement over what a "reasonable" settlement is as they don't and wouldn't know what is reasonable until the facts have been presented...at trial.
Algorithmic abuse of the system to extract payments already exists in the form of the debt collection industry
The debt collection system doesn't use the court system at all. Assuming you are referring to individual debts, not corporate debts, debt collectors have a very low success rate in court since (a) they have to prove the debt is valid, (b) that they now own the debt contract, and (c) they did not violate any laws in the pursuit of collecting on that debt. A and C are actually really hard for a third-party debt collector to prove.
That's not how litigation actually works in this country. Unless the plaintiff can actually prove damages, there's no threat of "heavy" damages. The primary economic concern is spending a lot of money on legal fees, which is the primary trigger for getting businesses to settle instead of litigate. It doesn't work so well against people though.
They'll punish (or be biased against) whichever party seems responsible for not accepting a "reasonable" settlement.
That is false and any judge caught doing that would be removed from the bench, immediately. The judge does not exercise any judgement over what a "reasonable" settlement is as they don't and wouldn't know what is reasonable until the facts have been presented...at trial.
Algorithmic abuse of the system to extract payments already exists in the form of the debt collection industry
The debt collection system doesn't use the court system at all. Assuming you are referring to individual debts, not corporate debts, debt collectors have a very low success rate in court since (a) they have to prove the debt is valid, (b) that they now own the debt contract, and (c) they did not violate any laws in the pursuit of collecting on that debt. A and C are actually really hard for a third-party debt collector to prove.