Culture versus institutions

Kevin Drum opines on why lawsuits are far more common in the US than in Europe:

Long story short, this difference between Europe and the U.S. is…not really due to a national culture that promotes a refusal to accept personal responsibility or anything like that. It’s mostly institutional in nature, and the incentives of our institutions point in the direction of more lawsuits instead of more regulations.

Answers that focus on institutions and incentives instead of culture are more persuasive to me.