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What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

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Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#41

Post by rectang »

narrator wrote: post #37

Just to put a word in for the other side. A friend of mine had some startup that had a huge contract for its product. One of the employees got let go and filed an employment suit. The lawyer he got was somewhat unethical and basically buried the company in legal fees. They went out of business before they could fulfill the big contract and tried to settle many times with the employee, but the lawyer kept egging him o…

Burying the opposition in legal fees is only available to parties with the financial resources to keep their lawyers going. The vast majority of the time, it is companies employing this stratagem, not individuals.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#42

Post by mikeash »

philwelch wrote: post #28
Aqua wrote: post #8

It's absurd that you can actually waive any of your legal rights... Seriously, this is bonkers. After the #MeToo movement revealed that forced arbitration has been used to keep sexual harassment complaints quiet, a handful of companies, including Google and Facebook Inc., agreed to get rid of it for harassment claims Wow, how noble of them. How about getting rid of all of that BS?

> It's absurd that you can actually waive any of your legal rights.. "You have the right to remain silent. So, we're just gonna go home now. Bye." A right that you cannot waive is more of an obligation, even if it's an obligation that in theory is to your own benefit.

There’s a difference between a right which you can choose not to exercise at a given moment, and a right which you can waive in perpetuity.

Your example is the former. You can choose not to remain silent. However, you do not waive the right! At any time, you can stop talking.

Binding arbitration clauses are the latter. It’s not just a matter of choosing to use arbitration. You also permanently give up your right to use the courts for that matter.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#43

Post by narrator »

rectang wrote: post #41
narrator wrote: post #37

Just to put a word in for the other side. A friend of mine had some startup that had a huge contract for its product. One of the employees got let go and filed an employment suit. The lawyer he got was somewhat unethical and basically buried the company in legal fees. They went out of business before they could fulfill the big contract and tried to settle many times with the employee, but the lawyer kept egging him o…

Burying the opposition in legal fees is only available to parties with the financial resources to keep their lawyers going. The vast majority of the time, it is companies employing this stratagem, not individuals.

It's different when it's a bootstrapped startup though.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#45

Post by wiradikusuma »

"(the) firm Proskauer Rose LLP who specializes in defending finance companies" — I wonder what would happen if _their_own_ employees sue them, it would be hilarious.

Also:

Apparently, I can't select the text to copy/paste—and I've tried disabling JavaScript. I wonder what's the reason for this?

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#46

Post by kyrieeschaton »

ldiracdelta wrote: post #32
jedberg wrote: post #10

Ok, so the reason we have arbitration at all is to save the courts time. This makes sense. This seems like such an easy problem to solve too. Just don't let the company or the worker pick the arbitrator. Require by law that the arbitrator be picked by a judge, or be randomly assigned by the court system, who has presumably vetted the arbitrator. The main problem with these things is that the arbitrator is picked by t…

How about we reduce the court load by instituting loser-pays tort reform.

This effectively makes it impossible for a small plaintiff (or defendant!) to justify the risk of fighting anyone with a multi million dollar legal team at their disposal.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#47

Post by sdrothrock »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #45

"(the) firm Proskauer Rose LLP who specializes in defending finance companies" — I wonder what would happen if _their_own_ employees sue them, it would be hilarious. Also: Apparently, I can't select the text to copy/paste—and I've tried disabling JavaScript. I wonder what's the reason for this?

I can select fine even with javascript enabled -- the issue seems to be that the highlight is nearly invisible.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#48

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

jjoonathan wrote: post #40
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? https://law.freeadvice.com/litigation/appeals/arbitration_ap... Granted, the appeals are unlikely to succeed, but perhaps that is because arbitration typically has an approximately fair outcome? Appeals of typical court cases aren't likely to succeed either, but we don't say that court is therefore unfair.

Yes, I'm sure, because I read your link, which says that you can't appeal the facts of the case or the merits of the decision, you can only appeal the process, which, in its own words, provides "a high standard of deference to the arbitrator."

You're generally not going to be able to appeal either of those things in court, either, is my point.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#49

Post by [deleted] »

jedberg wrote: post #10

Ok, so the reason we have arbitration at all is to save the courts time. This makes sense. This seems like such an easy problem to solve too. Just don't let the company or the worker pick the arbitrator. Require by law that the arbitrator be picked by a judge, or be randomly assigned by the court system, who has presumably vetted the arbitrator. The main problem with these things is that the arbitrator is picked by t…

[deleted]

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#50

Post by mruts »

Why can’t judicial systems just get more funding? Surely they aren’t that expensive? You just have to rent the space, and pay the employees (all of which probably don’t make that much money).

Surely some money from the military could pay for that?

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