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Fucking Sue Me (2011)

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Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#151

Post by slantyyz »

benihana wrote: post #70
pearjuice wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone with 500k and a few employed certainly has money. This story was sheer luck and is only showing off that.

I don't think you fully appreciate how expensive it is to go to court.

A big part of the game is played before the matter is even played out in the court system. This part is much less expensive.

It's one thing to be threatened with a lawsuit, but it's another matter once the paperwork is filed.

When I was hit with a revenge suit during the first bubble, the single, asset-free me had a different reaction than some of my peers who had families and much more to lose.

There's a lot of psychological warfare going on. When a process server shows up at your doorstep and serves papers to your spouse at your partially-paid-for house, things take a turn. Any sense of righteous defiance you might have starts to waver at this point.

The plaintiff in my situation got a lot for the 20-30K they probably spent on suing us. Without going to court, they shut down an entire company and made over a half-dozen people unemployed -- edit: while making them pay for their own legal fees too --. And they got the satisfaction of a "moral" victory for chump change. Never mind that most of their claims were bunk.

So, in a nutshell, it's not always about going to court.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#152

Post by slantyyz »

mistercow wrote: post #150
slantyyz wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who are in revenge mode don't care what's good for business. It makes them feel better and that matters more. In the case of suing former employees, it also sends a clear message to existing employees.

>In the case of suing former employees, it also sends a clear message to existing employees. Yes, but I'm not sure "run" is the message an you want to send to your employees.

More often than not, executives/companies think they're doing you a favor by giving you a job, even the ones who pretend to care about their employees.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#153

Post by brianmcconnell »

slantyyz wrote: post #105
jasonkester wrote: post #39

There's a simple reason why this works for small businesses: nobody sues a guy with no money. So if you're a sole proprietor scraping by and you piss off a giant company with lawyers enough that they want to file a lawsuit against you, well, what's the upside for them if they win? Tens of thousands of dollars in expenses on their side, and roughly zero dollars in recovered costs from the business they destroyed or th…

Never underestimate the pettiness of executives in companies with a lot of money. I've been on the receiving end of a meritless revenge lawsuit. The net result was that it shut our startup down and turned many of the employees against the founder on a personal level. I was lucky to be able to cut my legal fees with some of my coworkers by sharing a lawyer, but I still ended up being out a few thousand dollars prior t…

Agree 100%. I had the misfortune to run across someone who took great pleasure in bullying people with his lawyers, a profoundly dishonest and unpleasant person. It's hard to overstate how damaging these people can be. Ever since then, I've made a point of doing public record searches on people to check if they have a history of suing people, which has enabled me to dodge a couple bullets since then.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#155

Post by otikik »

mverwijs wrote: post #88

Reminded me of "Screw you. Pay me.", a video that advices to get a lawyer before you sign anything. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450424

Note that the original video was titled "F*ck you. Pay me.". The linked venturebeat article decided to use a synonym for some reason.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#156

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

goostavos wrote: post #82
pepve wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being silly. And I don't think that's what downvotes are for (not that I have a say in the matter, because I don't have the button). Explaining why the comic is relevant would be like explaining the joke itself. That hardly every works. Would you downvote a comment with just a link to a paper about the technology being discussed in the article?

I have the downvote button :) while I wouldn't have downvited the parent comment, I understood why he was. The comments are what separates HN from other sites in my opinion. A "relevant:" comic comment doesn't do much to advance the discussion, its just noise in the thread -- this is of course simply my opinion. Linking a comment, and linking a journal article are two very different actions. I wouldn't downvote someo…

>Give a summary of why you're linking to the article,

To me, one of the great things about HN is that someone can post a link without comment, and I can click that link without too much fear of being rickrolled, goatse'd, or some other mental equivalent. In this case, if I wasn't interested in looking at a cartoon, I could decide to close the tab in about the time it takes to read the poster's summary.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#158

Post by dylangs1030 »

tptacek wrote: post #51
wavefunction wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted your post because it only contained a link to a web comic. If you had provided some of your own opinions on the blog post or why the comic was relevant to the blog post, I would have refrained. I like to explain my downvotes when the downvoted post is not an obvious troll.

I canceled out your downvote because I like Hark! A Vagrant.

You'd probably like SMBC too (if you don't already read it).

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#159

Post by superuser2 »

jasonkester wrote: post #39

There's a simple reason why this works for small businesses: nobody sues a guy with no money. So if you're a sole proprietor scraping by and you piss off a giant company with lawyers enough that they want to file a lawsuit against you, well, what's the upside for them if they win? Tens of thousands of dollars in expenses on their side, and roughly zero dollars in recovered costs from the business they destroyed or th…

This doesn't seem to deter patent trolls going after no-name startups and individual App Store apps.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#160

Post by btilly »

larrys wrote: post #135
btilly wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But lawyers working in private practice, or partners in firms with a lot of power, will presumably be willing to balance risk against reward, and try to optimize accordingly. Lawyers: please correct me if I'm assuming incorrectly here. I am not a lawyer, but you are certainly assuming incorrectly. It is a lawyer's job to not only get you a good contract, but also to maximize their billable hours. They do not gouge to…

"But the risks and rewards that the lawyer is balancing are their risks and rewards, which are not the same as yours." Otoh if you take away that "pay for time" aspect you end up with someone who might be likely to cut corners because they are being compensated in a way in which they are disadvantaged if they spend more time than they need to. After all you did also say: " They do not gouge too aggressively - after a…

"They do not gouge too aggressively - after all they want future billable hours" so there is some "governor" on the process that prevents them from eating like a goldfish with unlimited food supply.

One of the things that you'll notice lawyers doing is throwing up a trial balloon by finding something to bill you for that you did not ask. If you don't push on that, you'll wind up on the "gouge" side of the equation. If you do push back on that, you've got better odds of winding up on the "maximize long-term returns" side instead.

Both ways the lawyer is doing their best to eat as much as they can get away with.

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