During my internship at San Jose, I had to go back to my apartment in Los Angeles from time to time. At the time, I tended to use night buses to save some money. On the way back to San Jose, I woke up around 5 am and noticed the bus was not moving.
It turned out that a guy, who got on this bus by mistake, was trying to make the bus driver head to his destination. (His destination was San Diego, if I remember correctly.) Their conversation was like
Guy: "Why are we here now? I need to go to San Diego! Change the direction!"
Driver: "This bus heads to San Jose. You have to go to San Jose and then go back to..."
Guy: "Why are you heading to San Jose!? I hate San Jose! It's so cold there!"
Driver: "I understand that! But this bus is bound for San Jose."
Guy: "No! You should go back to San Diego now! That's where I need to go."
Unbelievably, his ridiculous attempt had lasted for hours.Eventually, someone called the police, the guy was persuaded by the policeman to get off, and he did (, although it took several hours...) During the persuasion, I was impressed by how the policeman didn't resort to arrest. Rather, the policeman gently persuaded him with words until he voluntarily got off the bus. If I were in the place of the policeman, I would have easily turned this into a legal problem, possibly ending up with arresting him, because his attempt was completely out of "common sense."
This incident made me rethink the common knowledge, "The United States is a litigious society." When people have a wide range of values, problems become more difficult to resolve. This is because they cannot communicate or compromise through "common sense." In such a society, resorting to laws becomes an appealing option to take.
Japanese people often have the impression that it is brutal of Americans to turn a daily problem into a legal problem, believing that it should be resolved by communicating. But this impression underestimates the diversity of the US.
In my experience, Americans are great at communicating to resolve such daily issues, perhaps much better than Japanese people. However, their daily issues tend to be much harder to resolve due to the country's diversity, having little "common sense" in common. The US is litigious not because of their personality but because of their diversity.