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Comment by dpifke | Hacker News Reader

You can be sued by anyone, for anything, at any time.

Whether or not that lawsuit has any merit is irrelevant.

With certain exceptions based on subject matter (e.g. SLAPP) or jurisdiction, it still costs money to hire a lawyer to defend against the suit.

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American law does not apply in Austria

True, but while I don't know Austria's laws, I know that in any country that isn't fully corrupt (and even in many of them) anyone can take anyone to court for anything. There are different rules around loser pays (there is no good answer here - only bad compromises) and how fast the judge will dismiss fraudulent claims, but if there is anyone who can't get a day in court over a legitimize issues the country is corrupt. Austria isn't perfect (no country is), but there international reputation isn't nearly bad enough that I would expect someone to be unable to get your in court for anything they want.

Find a reason to sue them in the US. That's how people use the UK's horrible libel laws.

Why not? What state is that in?

> Whether or not that lawsuit has any merit is irrelevant.

That’s not entirely true. In some jurisdictions persistent baseless legal action, or even empty threats of legal action can themselves be considered a cause for action.

Also, to sue someone for more than a "small claims" amount you need a lawyer and most lawyers will not bother with cases that they are obviously not going to win, and they are ethically bound to tell you that you have no case.

I don't think that's how things work in most European countries. Yes, there are costs but they will be covered by the loser. No way this person loses against these particular fraudsters

The situation in the EU in general is all but satisfactory, especially for investigative journalism. There exists a term for it: SLAPP – Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. There is currently an initiative of a group of European MEPs underway for better anti-SLAPP legislation in the EU member states. You may read more about the SLAPP problem in this article, published by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom: https://www.ecpmf.eu/slapp-the-background-of-strategic-lawsu...

Some countries are also sensible to abuse of the legal system to this end, e.g. Lenovo had to pay 20,000 EUR in damages after they decided to drag the case of a consumer who wanted his 42 EUR Windows license refunded: https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210302-01.en.html

Also, a lot of the cases these lawsuits in EU countries are thrown out because of how absurd they are.

It still cost time and money to get to that point

still costs money upfront

American law does not apply in Canada either

But the Common Law does (except in Quebec), so there are some pretty significant similarities.

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