A $500M Family Feud • Hacker News Board

Re: A $500M Family Feud

#11

Post by Qub3d » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

privateSFacct wrote: post #3

A few major factors for this with the very wealthy. 1) If you have $1B an attorney will tell you that you can win the case. You are surrounded by yes men and women in many cases. 2) The court systems are not well setup for these cases. They let them spiral way over page length / deadlines etc. Compare to someone facing 5 years of prison - often adjudicated in relatively short order 3) For all sorts of gimmick reasons…

I mean, if its a bunch of very wealthy people throwing away money in civil torts, its their right to do so, I suppose. Its difficult to make a cut and dry line in the sand between a SLAPP suit versus two very motivated litigants.

Perhaps the limits should be placed on what can constitute a civil law case in the first place.

Re: A $500M Family Feud

#12

Post by nradov » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:57 PM UTC

privateSFacct wrote: post #3

A few major factors for this with the very wealthy. 1) If you have $1B an attorney will tell you that you can win the case. You are surrounded by yes men and women in many cases. 2) The court systems are not well setup for these cases. They let them spiral way over page length / deadlines etc. Compare to someone facing 5 years of prison - often adjudicated in relatively short order 3) For all sorts of gimmick reasons…

Courts should charge document filing fees that increase exponentially with page count.

Re: A $500M Family Feud

#13

Post by vageli » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

privateSFacct wrote: post #3

A few major factors for this with the very wealthy. 1) If you have $1B an attorney will tell you that you can win the case. You are surrounded by yes men and women in many cases. 2) The court systems are not well setup for these cases. They let them spiral way over page length / deadlines etc. Compare to someone facing 5 years of prison - often adjudicated in relatively short order 3) For all sorts of gimmick reasons…

> If we cared about fights of the rich if you just were allowed to take previous assertions at face value and kept the process tight things would move more quickly.

> ie, if in previous cases / situations you claimed to have no control / no interest in an entity (liability claims / previous divorce claims / tax claims and structuring), then for purposes of current litigation that is what counts.

It sounds like you are getting at the concept of estoppel.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel

Re: A $500M Family Feud

#14

Post by privateSFacct » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #13

privateSFacct wrote: post #3

A few major factors for this with the very wealthy. 1) If you have $1B an attorney will tell you that you can win the case. You are surrounded by yes men and women in many cases. 2) The court systems are not well setup for these cases. They let them spiral way over page length / deadlines etc. Compare to someone facing 5 years of prison - often adjudicated in relatively short order 3) For all sorts of gimmick reasons…

> If we cared about fights of the rich if you just were allowed to take previous assertions at face value and kept the process tight things would move more quickly. > ie, if in previous cases / situations you claimed to have no control / no interest in an entity (liability claims / previous divorce claims / tax claims and structuring), then for purposes of current litigation that is what counts. It sounds like you ar…

The problem is the public interest is not usually well represented here.

For example, Rich person A in cahoots with Trustee C claims no interest in (untaxed) asset B. When they litigate against each other Trustee C can struggle with estoppel because they themselves knew transaction was a sham so in communication with C rich person A WAS clear that they intended to maintain control.

We need to have something like an absolute public interest estoppel. If you assert something to the government or in court that reduces your taxes / avoids liability etc, then what you said to anyone actually suing you not critical.