Hacker News Reader

Comment by wutf | Hacker News Reader

If they win all appeals, can they sue the government for lost revenue?

Generally? No.

When it comes to suing the US (or a state), just remember the default answer is "you can't sue the US" (or a state), and every other case is an explicit congressional exception, like the federal tort claims act, etc.

(see, generally, https://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/art3frag41_user.html...)

My grandfather was actually the first person to sue the US government (and particularly interesting for this case, it was against the CPSC) and have it actually come to vote in congress. My grandfather was the president of Marlin Toy Company, and in 1972 the CPSC mistakenly kept one of its products (the Flutter Ball) on the banned products list, and they refused to fix it until the next version of the list came out.

Surprisingly I can't find much on the case online (Some links below), and my Grandfather doesn't like to talk about it too much (though I have a box of legal documents from the case plus some articles). You can find more by looking up Edward Sohmers and the Marlin Toy Company.

https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal75...

https://books.google.com/books?id=cyU_fdnWhD8C&pg=PA22550&lp...

My limited knowledge of TPP laws says they could, but they would have to prove they been selling them successfully in other countries without Gov interruption and based their claim $ on other markets to relate to claimed damage.

TPP is not law. TPP is a proposed treaty that is far far far from being ratified and hopefully never does.

Even if ratified today, I doubt Zen could use it as it was not law at the time of the action.

And for this sort of thing it won't become law even if ratified without enabling legislation, but such legislation WRT to lawsuits could be retroactive and the powerful plaintiff's bar would undoubtedly be delighted if that were to happen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com