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Comment by jessamyn | Hacker News Reader

I was happy with how this went and the coverage has been nice.

This is not exactly related to your lawsuit, but I gather from your Twitter feed that these days, librarians are spending a lot of time helping people use computers and especially the Internet. I don't go to the library hardly ever these days, but I have heard of this phenomenon elsewhere, too.

Yep, it's a really useful thing libraries and librarians-without-libraries spend a lot of time doing. We're often good at teaching things that are poorly documented or that people assume "anyone can use." I'm a huge fan of tech and the people who build it but they're not always the best educators, y'know?

Good for you!

I'm interested in your perspective on the small claims route vs. class action.

It seems like a class action suit has the potential to have a larger impact on Equifax since the size of it would be so large, but it's sad to see individual amounts so low in most of them.

It would be so much more gratifying to see 50000 people sue individually and have Equifax have to staff 50000 individual cases. They could choose to defend for more than $5K per case win or lose, or they could just pay out $5K to each litigant.

Equifax would beg for a class action where they get off for $500/litigant + a couple million to the winning attorneys.

> Equifax would beg for a class action where they get off for $500/litigant + a couple million to the winning attorneys.

But this plaintiff only got $600

And they had to send a lawyer from Atlanta to Vermont which probably at least tripled that. Not saying it's not small change, just saying there are other costs.

I sort of feel "let a million lawsuits bloom" I think there's a usefulness in the death by 1000 cuts approach and I think there will be class action cases whether or not 100 or 1000 people decide to sue in small claims. I also think the schema is a little different (tho I am not a lawyer) so you can make somewhat different arguments and claims.

Did you get any sense of whether or not Equifax intends to appeal the decision?

There was some discussion about 6 months ago -- https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/7h9tn2/i_sued_... -- suggesting that it looked like their strategy might be to lose in small claims court but to appeal any decision against them.

(And see also https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/7lz38l/tried_t... which seemed … more like it might be fan fiction rather than a real story.)

They sent me a W-9. I do not think they plan to appeal.

Is there a way we could see what your court filing looked like (with all the personal info redacted, of course)?

I'm considering making a filing myself, and would like to use yours as a model (if that's allowed).

Also, does anyone know if precedent matters in small claims court? Would a small claims court in California care that another small claims court in Vermont ruled a certain way in a similar case?

I think I put the bulk of it on my Medium post you can read here. It was surprisingly not a lot of stuff.

https://medium.com/@jessamyn/suing-equifax-in-small-claims-c...

I'm just a non-lawyer law geek (and former law student), but my understanding is: precedent does matter in small claims court to the same extent as in regular court, but rules of procedure and evidence are relaxed, the ability to appeal the judgment can be limited (not always zero), and the judges sometimes have less training than in regular courts. A lot of these specifics are determined by laws which vary by state, but I don't think any states formally take a different approach to precedent in small claims specifically.

As for California vs Vermont, those are in different states and under the jurisdiction of different federal courts of appeals. Therefore the only directly binding judicial precedents shared between them would be from the US Supreme Court (and some from England at the time of US independence).

However, if there's no controlling binding precedent, most courts would be willing to consider other states' sufficiently relevant judgments at a persuasive but non-binding level.

"if there's no controlling binding precedent, most courts would be willing to consider other states' sufficiently relevant judgments at a persuasive but non-binding level."

It sounds like it could be useful to have some sort of database or clearinghouse of data breach cases won against Equifax in small claims court, so they can be referred to in one's filings as relevant judgements.

How hard is this to replicate? Could anyone do it?

Access to the courts is something guaranteed by the Constitution (standard disclaimer about the shape THAT's in). Usually googling "File a small claims case" and your state name will get you started. Here are the steps.

http://www.civillawselfhelpcenter.org/self-help/small-claims...

Answered like a librarian - with a link to an actual useful, authoritative resource. Perhaps YC can hire one to chip in to each discussion (I started typing that sentence tongue-in-cheek, but now I'm thinking that it would be fantastic. Imagine someone who added useful, authoritative resources to each discussion - rather than my having to skim through the crowd-sourced noise looking for the signal).

I filed a small claim against a property management company that tried to screw me. It's actually really easy. It takes a while (I remember the wait time being about 6 months), and you have to pay $50-100 to file and have the court "serve" the defendant, but honestly that's a pretty small fee considering you have the entire weight of the US legal system backing you if you're successful.

Is the company liable for the fee if they lose?

Good question, I don't actually know. I think it's possible to make it part of the claim.

Would it have been possible to bring up the stress and anxiety this data breach has caused? Personally, this has been the case.

I definitely tried to (last year was such a shitty year!) but there wasn't a lot of traction for that. Maybe if I had brought in therapist bills and said "Reimburse me"

Yay! Congrats :-)

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