What's really retarded is that
if someone sues for $20.01, they have a constitutional right to a jury trial; but if the cops want to take all your property, they can just get a magistrate to sign off on a search warrant, and then grab all your stuff as potential evidence and never give it back. They can just say, "Our investigation is still ongoing." People have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars that way, because they had kept all their savings in cash, and when the cops found out about it, they said, "Yeah, we're just gonna take all that, if you don't mind. You can go to court if you want, and try to prove that you got that money legally, but you're gonna have to pay for your own lawyer."