John Deere to pay $99M in right-to-repair settlement

Where I live, in small claims:

* Lawyers are not allowed

* There is no forced discovery. Sue John Deere, and they cannot ask for endless documents

* There is no way to assign costs on loss. If you lose, you never pay costs for the person you sued (which makes sense -- no lawyers)

* If you don't understand something, typically the judge will act as a mediator and explain it to you.

Yet meanwhile, suing in small claims will typically result in a big company using lawyers, who will try to pretend the above is not true. They will also rack up large costs for the company. In the end, sometimes a lawyer will appear in small claims court beside a company employee. However the company employee will do the talking.

My cost to file is $100. My cost to serve (via courier with tracking + sig) was $10. The company I went after, a fortune 500 company, I suspect spent >$50k on lawyers. While small to the company, it is truly a way to level the playing field.

What I find amusing here is, you could sue for a replacement unit. Explain what you found. Where I am, the max resolution is $30k, so you could easily get a refund for the tractor. Citing this issue while describing all of this, could result in two outcomes.

1) Deere employee claims (in their defense) that a batch of units were defective. They then deliver a fixed unit to you. While not perfect, it would be amusing, because they'll have just spent $50k in paying lawyers, along with making a proper unit.

2) You just claim that the tractor is defective, you can't sell it as it is, except maybe for parts. And you're not sure most of them are usable (weird electronics), and even cite that Deere stuff apparently is designed to break without authorized repairs. So how can you in good faith, even try to sell it to anyone??

So you ask for your time, costs, and full replacement costs with another brand.

Adding your wage/hr is somewhat typical here, for calls, research, sawing it open, all of it.

--

Anyhow.

If #1 is chosen and it breaks again, then you can repeat the whole fun process.

And I do mean it is fun.

$100 + I filled out a 2 page form, and then fedexed it to them. Their lawyers kept pestering me, to which I simply said "No" and "I don't need to give you anything, there's no forced discovery". This too was very satisfying, when I kept in mind how each call to me cost the company probably about $1k.

I mean, literally I'm sure each 5 minute call was around that ballpark. It was sheer joy. (Just don't discuss any aspect of the case in these calls.)

Then there was a pre-trail meeting where I, the company rep, and a retired judge sat. I was told that "nothing said here can ever be used in court", which made it more fun. The system's attempt to resolve before trial. That too was fun, for I got to finally tell the company, over and over, how wrong they were.

Anyhow.

It's a fun process.

When I hear these kinds of "blame the consumer" apologetics it never resonates with me - I'm just not going to get on board with some hypothetical natural state where corporations are inherently bad like some sort of sick animal and it's on consumers to sacrifice and plan with care in order to help the rest of society deal with them.

Corporations are just big groups of people. If their victims can choose self sacrifice in order to help the group then the corporation people could just as easily do the same and that feels far more just to me.

This is them trying to intimidate you right? Or settle pre-court at least? Not part of the actual process where some retired judge always mediates before trial? It reads as gross.