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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

#131

Post by mwexler »

While we are all bemoaning this for employment, note that in the US, in many cases, you've also given up your right to court for your credit card disagreements, disagreements with your insurance company, and disagreements with most major service providers where you had to sign a contract (though many telcos still provide an out for Small Claims court).

This is not just an employment thing, this is individual vs. group power dynamics across many aspects of commerce. As consumers or creators, if we provide work to a group (employment) or pay a group for service (a contract), that group is often working to push us into arbitration instead of allowing the courts to decide.

It's all very disappointing.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#132

Post by pjc50 »

verbify wrote: post #102
munchbunny wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Restructuring arbitration for neutrality and thus cannibalizing arbitration as an industry seems like a fine outcome to me. Feels a bit like the payday loan industry: I'm sure it does some people some good, but it's largely just predatory and throws people into a rigged game. We'd be better off with less of it.

An underappreciated facet of payday loans is that without them desperate people would borrow from unsavoury people - making them illegal drives the high risk loan business underground into the hands of the Mafia. And then the consequences for the desperate people for defaulting is no longer bankruptcy, but broken legs or worse. I agree we should have less of it, but all legislation should be mindful of the consequenc…

The demand is not really "pre-existing", it's one created by the payday loan industry to a large extent. Especially by advertising their use for buying consumer goods. What tends to happen is not that people go to the Mafia (traditionally they come to you!), but that people make creditors of their utility companies and landlords by deferring payment.

(The older alternative to unsecured very high interest short term loans is those secured on valuables - the pawn shop).

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#133

Post by verbify »

natpalmer1776 wrote: post #129
verbify wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, I think you summed up my feelings pretty succinctly. Was there something I wrote that led you to think I felt otherwise?

I think the issue here is that in an ideal world, neither would exist. The original reply to your comment suggests that this is not even being considered and thus is satirizing your rationale.

I think that's a charitable reading of the parent comment. I thought I made it clear that in an ideal world payday loans (and the mafia) wouldn't exist, so I'm not even sure what kind of ideal world the parent comment is suggesting.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#134

Post by pif »

morganvachon wrote: post #118
bloak wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware of this. "Loser pays", implemented literally, would be a bad thing. What you should do, which is what England has, is "the party whose unreasonable behaviour led to the case coming to court pays". Can someone suggest a concise way of expressing that, to help voters avoid a bad tort reform? In case it's not obvious, here's an example of where it matters. Alice damages Bob's car. Bob offers to settle for £100. A…

> In case it's not obvious, here's an example of where it matters. Alice damages Bob's car. Bob offers to settle for £100. Alice says, no, I want £500. Bob says, don't be silly, you can have £150, though that's too much, in my opinion. Alice sues Bob. The court decides that Alice should be compensated, so Alice "wins", and damages should be £80. Who should pay the court costs of £500? (And what if the damages were £3…

> Alice damages Bob's car.

He just inverted the names: Bob damages Alice's car.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#135

Post by cascom »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #106
verbify wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An underappreciated facet of payday loans is that without them desperate people would borrow from unsavoury people - making them illegal drives the high risk loan business underground into the hands of the Mafia. And then the consequences for the desperate people for defaulting is no longer bankruptcy, but broken legs or worse. I agree we should have less of it, but all legislation should be mindful of the consequenc…

Why not cap the maximumum interest rates? Switzerland, not really a communist hell hole and quite liberal in economic matters, for example, caps annual interest rates at 15% annually. You don't see more broken legs than anywhere else.

The problem is that pay day loans are typically pretty small <$500 and meant to be short duration 1-8 weeks, meaning that if it’s a $500 loan out for one month @15% that is $6.2 in interest, it is going to cost more than that to process and administer the loan, let alone funding costs, default risk, etc.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#136

Post by Haga »

siruncledrew wrote: post #22
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…

IANAL, but why not just have a special labor court with more judges to be the nonbiased arbitrators? Or use retired judges to be like “independent contractor” arbitrators as a special division of the courts? (I’m also not sure what the requirements to be an arbitrator are so please correct me).

Germany already has those.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#137

Post by verbify »

pjc50 wrote: post #132
verbify wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An underappreciated facet of payday loans is that without them desperate people would borrow from unsavoury people - making them illegal drives the high risk loan business underground into the hands of the Mafia. And then the consequences for the desperate people for defaulting is no longer bankruptcy, but broken legs or worse. I agree we should have less of it, but all legislation should be mindful of the consequenc…

The demand is not really "pre-existing", it's one created by the payday loan industry to a large extent. Especially by advertising their use for buying consumer goods. What tends to happen is not that people go to the Mafia (traditionally they come to you!), but that people make creditors of their utility companies and landlords by deferring payment. (The older alternative to unsecured very high interest short term l…

I'm not sure about the laws in your locality (in the UK you have to have a licence from the UK Office of Fair Trading to offer consumer credit), but I would generally support banning anyone other than payday loan companies from selling very high interest loans - high interest loans from utility companies and landlords strikes me as an obscenity.

> What tends to happen is not that people go to the Mafia (traditionally they come to you!)

The mob definitely loans money at high-interest:

http://archive.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2009/03...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loan_shark#Post-criminalizatio...

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#138

Post by vinceguidry »

pjc50 wrote: post #132
verbify wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An underappreciated facet of payday loans is that without them desperate people would borrow from unsavoury people - making them illegal drives the high risk loan business underground into the hands of the Mafia. And then the consequences for the desperate people for defaulting is no longer bankruptcy, but broken legs or worse. I agree we should have less of it, but all legislation should be mindful of the consequenc…

The demand is not really "pre-existing", it's one created by the payday loan industry to a large extent. Especially by advertising their use for buying consumer goods. What tends to happen is not that people go to the Mafia (traditionally they come to you!), but that people make creditors of their utility companies and landlords by deferring payment. (The older alternative to unsecured very high interest short term l…

No, the demand is created by the people who are desperate. Let's not put the cart before the horse here. They're not going to go away even if the services do.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#139

Post by renholder »

gcb0 wrote: post #78
narrator wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

so, because in this one time the company was as vulnerable as the person, the law is.... what? I can't even guess where you were going with your point!

I'm guessing that it was: Corporations are people too? Otherwise, likewise, I can't fathom what the point of the anecdote was.

If the company was truly in the wrong, then it going out of business isn't - necessarily - a bad thing. It sucks for the employed by it, yes, but - in the overall scheme - perhaps it was for the best?

Either way, there's - clearly - not enough information for this to be worthwhile.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#140

Post by renholder »

unreal37 wrote: post #63
devereaux wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can the lawyer of one party cause legal fees to the other party? I genuinely do not understand, as each party is responsible for its own costs

Each time you file a motion or a brief, the other side has to review that brief and file a counter-motion or brief. And research has to go into those things and you might spend days trying to come up with the information being requested. Every request you make from the other side, causes the other side more work and thus more expense. Imagine I asked you to find a receipt for every restaurant you've eaten at in the l…

>Each time you file a motion or a brief...

That doesn't sound like arbitration.

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