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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

#61

Post by learc83 »

munchbunny wrote: post #34
learc83 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that companies favor arbitration because arbitration tends to favor companies. If arbitration were truly neutral, and it were easy to access with low costs to the consumer, companies would stop using them. So even if companies don't pick the arbitrator, arbitrators still have an incentive to find in favor of companies. Additionally, small claims court already basically works like what you're describing…

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.

I'm fine with doing away with arbitration in most cases, but I'd rather just do that directly.

My point is that it's hard to enforce neutrality, because there is always an implicit incentive for arbitrators to find in favor of big companies. Even if those companies aren't directly choosing a specific arbitrator, big companies in the aggregate are the ones primarily driving the business.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#63

Post by unreal37 »

devereaux wrote: post #57
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…

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 last year, along with a list of who was there and what was discussed. How much work is that for you? Would answering that question be a significant amount of work?

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#64

Post by unreal37 »

tjpnz wrote: post #20

What would happen if you hired a lawyer and sued anyway? People agree to things all the time that wouldn't hold up in court.

You'd pretty much be spending money with no hope of even getting your issues discussed. And possibly having to pay the legal fees of your boss for the hassle.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#65

Post by lostdog »

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…

We should fix the legal system to be more effective and more fair. Forced arbitration doesn't do that--it just makes it (more) unfair in different ways.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#66

Post by lostdog »

electricwater wrote: post #33
paxy wrote: post #4

Arbitration contracts need to be illegal, period.

I think they should be legal but both parties need to agree to it after a lawsuit is filed. The courts may approve or deny this request on the basis of public policy. I wonder if a political party (Democrats) will take it up on them to restrict the ability of forced arbitrations between an employer and employee. I think it is just a question of time before someone like @AOC starts talking about it.

The CFPB tried to make a rule preventing forced arbitration in financial services agreements. You will be unsurprised to hear that Republicans in Congress struck that rule down.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#67

Post by sarchertech »

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 are many rights you can't waive. For instance, you can't sell yourself into slavery--everyone except for hardcore libertarians is fine with that one.

And you can't waive your right to remain silent permanently. You can reassert that right at any time.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#68

Post by gboudrias »

I'm fairly against arbitration and I'm fairly certain it's much more limited here in Canada.

In this particular story, what strikes me is the amounts being discussed. 1 million dollars isn't chump change to anyone. If we have to have arbitration, there should be a hard legal limit on how much they can arbitrate when a physical person is involved. Also it should be limited to financial matters, forcing any other matter (discrimination etc) to be settled privately seems... wrong.

Re: What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss

#69

Post by cryptonector »

vageli wrote: post #21
cryptonector wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waiving your right to first go to court seems reasonable enough provided you cannot waive the right to appeal arbitration in court.

How can you appeal the arbitration in court? Pretty sure you agree (when signing away your rights) that you will hold the arbitration result to be binding and you give up any potential court remedy. IANAL though.

In particular I have in mind issues of law. Things like whether a business should be allowed to withhold deferred compensation from an ex-employee who takes them to an arbitrator. Or whether a bonus for the previous year, already announced, is deferred compensation or future compensation, and therefore cannot be withheld after a layoff early the next year. Obviously some of these things are policy issues to be settled statutorily, but some also are exactly the sorts of issues to be settled by courts in the absence of statutory law, and some may involve invalidating unconstitutional statutes or parts of them.

Appeals of procedural matters also should be allowed, naturally. And procedural errors in ascertaining the facts of the case should cause de novo arbitration (or removal from arbitration and into a jury trial, if the arbitrators insist on making the sort of procedural errors that call their fact finding into question). Otherwise, fact-finding by arbitrators should not be subject to appeal, as allowing them to so be would greatly diminish the utility of arbitration.

Another thing to appeal would be the method of selection of arbitrators, the validity of their credentials, etc. But there should be fairly high bars to these (not sure how to construct them).

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