Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

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Now, some amounts are egregious, but remember the lawyers are fronting literally all of the cost here. They don't get it back if they lose, either. It's kind of like complaining a vc made 500x what you did on an IPO.

I also think hacker news has no concept of what a large lawsuit like this costs.

if they spend 20 bucks a class member on everything from locating them to location to answering questions to handling claims, that's 50% of that 1.25 million right there. That doesn't include the actual billable hour cost of the lawsuit, which for large and complex lawsuits, is ridiculous.

At the same time, hilariously, people here are against class arbitration (which would pay lawyers dramatically less and claimants more), and pretty much every other solution. It appears they just think "lawyers should be paid less, but work harder to get others money". IE they want a system where there are class actions, and the companies are made to hurt, but nobody else other than the people in the class make money.

The truth is most of these claims are worthless entirely, and people don't deserve squat. So $125 is infinitely more than they should have gotten. (i'm sure someone will come along with no understanding of contract damages and claim the class members deserve billions)

Are some valuable? Sure. Do some serve a valuable purpose of deterrent? Again, sure.

But that's like 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 of all class action lawsuits right now.

Check out most class action lawfirm case lists, for example, and see how many you think are really deserving of more than nominal damages or "please fix this issue for us". Think about how many of them are the moral equivalent of bugs you've made in software before that is sold or used by other people. Do you think you should be paying millions?

Personally, I can't wait for the day when liability for software bugs comes and everyone here immediately changes their mind and decides most of these kinds of lawsuits are probably not worth as much as they thought :)

In the meantime, people starting worse-than-useless startups appear to be deserving of untold billions, and startups doing the same type of thing (eg making infinite multiples of their workers, who basically make squat) are a-okay.

BTW, fun fact: Class action lawyers, on average, work much worse hours than startup engineers.

> remember the lawyers are fronting literally all of the cost here.

What does that tell us about the way our legal system works?

that it does work? how else would this work? someone claims a grievance and needs assistance to settling the dispute. by having this option of a lawyer(group/individual) front the cost it lets anyone bring a viable dispute to the table. It shakes out the frivolous from taking up the time of the courts. It also insures those suing have standing which can be difficult except when facing corporate entity. Against government a common ploy is to claim the plaintiffs don't have standing and without a private agency to go to bat for a group it can be real difficult to move forward?

Government intervention? How would that work? Worse I can imagine all sorts of ways that it would be abused. Look at how much frivolous suits are in the system filed by those who don't to put any skin into the game

> BTW, fun fact: Class action lawyers, on average, work much worse hours than startup engineers.

Can you quantify that?

Sure. These are lawyers who work, on average 2200-2500+ billable hours a year. That's billable. As in, if you tracked your time in ten minute increments, only the time directly spent working is billed to a client.

So if you take an hour for lunch, go to the bathroom, take a coffee break, etc, none of that counts. Nor does commuting, hanging out on hacker news, reddit, waiting for compiles, reading legal updates or general correspondence.

2200 billable hours a year comes out to roughly:

With a half hour commute you are "working" from 7:30am to 8:30pm Monday-Friday And 9:30am-5:30pm three Saturdays a month

• With a one hour commute you are "working" from 7:00am to 9:00pm Monday-Friday And 9:00am to 6:00pm three Saturdays a month

Assuming you take one hour for lunch, one hour for dinner and 4 15 minute breaks, and bill all other time

2500 billable hours a years means you work another 300 billable hours, which comes out to working all sundays 10-5pm as well.

Engineers aren't anywhere near this productive in the hours they do work :)

If you want liability protection for software bugs you just have to be willing to pay the appropriate amount to achieve it.

"but remember the lawyers are fronting literally all of the cost here"

Well. Class action lawyers only back a case when they know the cost of the settlement is cheaper for the defendant than the court costs. This way the defendant's side wont be heard. When confronted with actual court/litigation many of these scumbag class action attorneys flee like cockroaches.

The truth is most of these claims are worthless entirely, and people don't deserve squat. So $125 is infinitely more than they should have gotten.

...Then all the more reason the lawyers who helped them bring the suit in the first place don't deserve to be paid for empowering said fraud.

Lawyers do what their clients pay them to do. If you want to make a dent, you need to get clients to stop believing they should earn money for this. Punishing the middlemen is unlikely to achieve much, as reprehensible as you may find them.

It's like arresting drug dealers instead of trying to get people to stop taking drugs in the first place.

Until you stop demand, ...

The clients didn't pay them...

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