Comment by vertex-four | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vertex-four | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

They have allegedly repeatedly discriminated on the basis of sex, and caused a hostile work environment. Both are civil complaints, not criminal - this means that in order to pursue it, Susan J. Fowler would have to find a lawyer willing to take it, and likely pay that lawyer. And all she could get out of it would be money.

If she took it to court, here's what would happen: the company's lawyers would go through all her online communications, track down all her exes, and find anything at all to do with sex or relationships, with the intention of finding something to paint her as an untrustworthy slut. Court cases are public, and a court case against Uber would have significant media interest, so some significant amount of people would hear about this and believe them - to the point of harassing her online. Once the court case is over, she'd have significant trouble finding work, since she's proven herself willing to stand up against her employer.

Alternatively, she could move on with her life and write a blog post about it which'll be forgotten in a few months. Companies are willing to give a little more leeway when all that falls out of it is needing to write up some PR, and you don't get your irrelevant dirty laundry dragged up in public. I know which one I'd do.

A couple of thoughts come to mind when I read this paragraph:

1. If there is meat in her story, I am sure there are multiple lawyers who will be willing to work for a share of the settlement - i.e. she never pays out of pocket.

2. It seems we have a society where the "plaintiff" is wronged bad enough to go to court, but is wronged enough to complain about it and have society decide and punish on her behalf! Even when society doesn't know enough about the case.

This reminds me of the doctor who shot that lion in africa... society punished him really really bad - he lost patients, lost ability to work, and what not. Later, it turned out he had done everything by the book, and is not slated to be punished/held accountable either in US or zimbabwe. Same thing here... idiots on the internet feel they KNOW uber is wrong, and they are willing to punish the company by #deleteuber, and willing to go on a downvote spree towards people like me on online forums.

What happens if 6 months later it turns out Susan was lying? Will all of you come back to upvote me?

That would open them up to discovery, which all companies -- and Uber in particular, if half of what she says is true -- go to great lengths to avoid. No, Uber's lawyers would dig up whatever dirt they could find, present it to her legal team, a pre-trial settlement would be reached, and none of this would ever see the light of day. I actually find it quite noble what she's done here; she passed up an easy five- or six-figure payday for the opportunity to tell her story.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com