ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation • Hacker News Board

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#61

Post by DannyBee » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #53

DannyBee wrote: post #13

Reading the complaint, ADP is not likely come close to winning. The defamation they claimed happened is that Zenefits "alleged that ADP intentionally sought to cause harm to ADP’s clients solely to gain an unfair competitive advantage against Zenefits.” Even if you argue this is defamation per se (and not per quod), about a matter of private concern, they'd still have to prove "4. That [name of defendant] failed to u…

I'm curious, do you know something about the facts of this case that hasn't appeared on Hacker News before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9688442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686175 It looks like they were asking for users' login credentials to scrape ADP's frontend, and that Zenefits had never talked directly to ADP. The scraping broke when ADP added DOS p…

Zenefits was not sued for TOS violations, they were sued for defamation.

The case number is 4:15-cv-02560-DMR You can use PACER to get more info

The complaint charges: (1) DEFAMATION;

(2) INTENTIONAL INTERFERENCE WITH PROSPECTIVE ECONOMIC RELATIONS;

(3) UNFAIR COMPETITION;

(4) FALSE ADVERTISING;

(5) LANHAM ACT VIOLATION

Everything but the first claim is just dumb.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#62

Post by gravity13 » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

olafskyansian wrote: post #19

I have a lot of respect for what Zenefits has done to date in shaking up the insurance space, but you have to REALLY question what the heck is going on with Parker's leadership there. What is going on that the founder/CEO has enough time to chastise an engineer candidate on Quora and put out factually inaccurate posts on topics like healthcare reform (he had something out on LinkedIn a few weeks back) but doesn't hav…

I was curious what "chastise an engineer candidate on Quora" meant so I looked it up: http://qr.ae/7IErH1

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable answer to me. Especially after reading the question. It gives me a bad taste, I wouldn't want to work with that guy. He's the annoying guy at the table who is like "I work at x" and wants everybody to go "oooh," not "wtf is zenefits?" It reeks of the almost ubiquitous entitled tech engineer stench.

If anything, this makes me appreciate the integrity of Conrad.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#63

Post by nostrademons » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

xsmasher wrote: post #57

nostrademons wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, do you know something about the facts of this case that hasn't appeared on Hacker News before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9688442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686175 It looks like they were asking for users' login credentials to scrape ADP's frontend, and that Zenefits had never talked directly to ADP. The scraping broke when ADP added DOS p…

The parent is addressing whether ADP will win a defamation suit; it's possible that Zenefits violated TOS and that ADP shut them down with good reason, but that doesn't mean that Zenefits defamed ADP.

Yeah, but DannyBee's post explicitly mentions that they'll fail based on 4. "That Zenefits failed to use reasonable care to determine the truth or falsity of the statement(s)". I wanted to know if he knows something factually about what went on other than what's been reported here, because if I were a jury member and the facts were that Zenefits used their customers' login credentials (against ADP's TOS) to access ADP's internal systems, and then were shut off for generating 100x more traffic than a normal human user, and then responded to that shutoff with an open letter to their customers alleging bad faith rather than shooting ADP a "Hey, our customers can't access your service through our portal. What's up? Can we work with you to make our customers happy again?" - I would consider that a lack of reasonable care, barring legal instructions (perhaps "reasonable care" has a specific meaning different from the layperson's?) or facts to the contrary.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#64

Post by matwood » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

apalmer wrote: post #27

tdees40 wrote: post #4

The descent into lawsuits is pretty sad. When customers hate your product (i.e. the ADP front-end) so much that an entire company forms around making something less terrible, you really have to look at yourself in the mirror. I continue to be amazed by the horribleness of benefits web front-ends. I recently did a simple task in our Hewitt system, and it required five pop-up windows. It's just so, so terrible.

The ADP front-end isn't the product. front-end is basically an admin screen, the product is the payroll actually hitting your employees bank, and its all the customer service involved if things go wrong before hitting your employees bank account. This is why people pay them, there user interfaces are bad. However it is bad interfaces over reliable services... there competition in this case offers great interfaces ove…

Yep. Payroll is also hard in the backend. The rules differ by state and by country. I've only written very basic payroll systems and it was a PITA. The UI was the least important thing when it came to paying people properly.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#65

Post by tdees40 » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

thewhizkid wrote: post #37

Someone1234 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When customers hate your product (i.e. the ADP front-end) so much that an entire company forms around making something less terrible, you really have to look at yourself in the mirror. Is this really accurate? Doesn't Zenefits exist to merge several services, only some of which ADP provide? And while many people have said that ADP's front end is bad, it seems like you've taken those claims a step further by claimin…

Would you rather have something that looks nice or actually works? Especially when it comes to nontrivial things like benefits and payroll? Don't you think it's a bit silly for you as a user to be swayed to use one thing or another by a pretty interface? We seem to understand never to "judge a book by its cover"...except when it comes to web interfaces.

Why can't I have both? Isn't that the value proposition of Zenefits?

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#66

Post by DannyBee » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:01 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #13

Reading the complaint, ADP is not likely come close to winning. The defamation they claimed happened is that Zenefits "alleged that ADP intentionally sought to cause harm to ADP’s clients solely to gain an unfair competitive advantage against Zenefits.” Even if you argue this is defamation per se (and not per quod), about a matter of private concern, they'd still have to prove "4. That [name of defendant] failed to u…

And here's the part where ADP likely loses:

http://blog.zenefits.com/adp-2/

If Zenefits had knowledge of this product prior to making their statement (quite likely), then this is nearly certain to be good enough to support the statement they made.

(Note: I really could care less either way, i'm just trying to give an objective legal viewpoint :P)

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#67

Post by geori » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:02 PM UTC

randall wrote: post #60

jonathanmarcus wrote: post #55

We're a very small company (10 FTEs), but we have been anything but impressed with Zenefits as a customer. We only use them for medical and dental insurance, but in reality, they provide very little, if any value. The Zenefits software is really nothing special, and in fact, the onboarding UI is pretty poor. Now that we have our insurance, Zenefits adds zero value to us. We deal directly with United and Zenefits coll…

Have you ever had an insurance broker before? They're like the same thing but without the easy software.

Your local insurance salesperson probably has less bargaining power than Zenefits, so your rates with them could be higher.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#68

Post by spicyj » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:04 PM UTC

gravity13 wrote: post #62

olafskyansian wrote: post #19

I have a lot of respect for what Zenefits has done to date in shaking up the insurance space, but you have to REALLY question what the heck is going on with Parker's leadership there. What is going on that the founder/CEO has enough time to chastise an engineer candidate on Quora and put out factually inaccurate posts on topics like healthcare reform (he had something out on LinkedIn a few weeks back) but doesn't hav…

I was curious what "chastise an engineer candidate on Quora" meant so I looked it up: http://qr.ae/7IErH1 Sounds like a perfectly reasonable answer to me. Especially after reading the question. It gives me a bad taste, I wouldn't want to work with that guy. He's the annoying guy at the table who is like "I work at x" and wants everybody to go "oooh," not "wtf is zenefits?" It reeks of the almost ubiquitous entitled t…

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#69

Post by vladgur » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:05 PM UTC

Reading over the ADP filing(obviously one-sided), it amazes me that a company like Zenefits would do something that would make any tech professional cringe:

"Zenefits also asked the ADP client to take a screenshot of the temporary username/password screen for the account and email it to a Zenefits email. “

"ADP identified several potential concerns with Zenefits’ approach, including clients granting Zenefits admin user credentials to allow Zenefits access to the clients’ employee and company data in a manner that may not meet ADP’s security standards, and allowing Zenefits to make changes requiring a payroll admin level access. “

And this is ladies and gents why you should really worry when you base your business on scraping

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#70

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:05 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #66

DannyBee wrote: post #13

Reading the complaint, ADP is not likely come close to winning. The defamation they claimed happened is that Zenefits "alleged that ADP intentionally sought to cause harm to ADP’s clients solely to gain an unfair competitive advantage against Zenefits.” Even if you argue this is defamation per se (and not per quod), about a matter of private concern, they'd still have to prove "4. That [name of defendant] failed to u…

And here's the part where ADP likely loses: http://blog.zenefits.com/adp-2/ If Zenefits had knowledge of this product prior to making their statement (quite likely), then this is nearly certain to be good enough to support the statement they made. (Note: I really could care less either way, i'm just trying to give an objective legal viewpoint :P)

[deleted]