Comment by grogenaut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grogenaut | Hacker News Reader

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I believe if google takes anything that could be seen as punitive action against you because you filed a lawsuit they open themselves up to much larger damages.

When I was the class representative in a class action law suit, during the deposition the very first thing the lawyer defending the company we were suing opened with "I want to assure you that you will continue to receive the very best service, and we will take no actions against you for exercising your rights. If you feel this is not being honored reach out to me directly. We take this very seriously." and handed me their card. Then we got down to the deposition.

For me personally them taking that action against me would have been a win win as it would have majorly increased my payout. This was a car dealer so I would just go to another mechanic. Or buy out of state. For google? I'd need to move some files and update a few companies on my address, I have alternate factors on the things I care about anyway.

> I believe if google takes anything that could be seen as punitive action against you because you filed a lawsuit they open themselves up to much larger damages.

Does it, though? Their ToS almost certainly allows them to close your account for no reason.

I made a support request to my bank recently and they decided to use the ToS to simply close my account instead of deal with the request which would have required a change to their immutable support script.

Terms of service are, legally speaking, hogwash.

Their purpose is almost entirely to scare legally uninformed end users.

Yeah but you can terminate an unpaid service for no reason, that’s well established. It’s not even governed by contract law because there’s no consideration.

The real reason small claims is a bad idea is that this should be handled through a class action.

What!

So you get 1 buck and teams of lawyers get 70 million?

Better to use small claims, at least you'll get thousands. And most small claims courts? No lawyers.

If everyone took google to small claims, it'd be the death of 1000 cuts for them.

> Does it, though? Their ToS almost certainly allows them to close your account for no reason

Whistleblowers can't be fired from at-will employment for the similar reasons, i.e. massive legal exposure. Sure, an employee can be fired for no reason, but companies choose to settle (i.e. pay out a lot of money) instead of firing people outright if the situation can give the barest whiff of retaliation.

I don't know what the law says about this, but "for no reason" is always different than "for any reason". Because you sued them is a specific reason, that they might be prohibited from retaliating based on (or might not, again I don't know).

The classic example of this is race. You can not hire someone, or deny someone service, for no reason. You can't however not hire them, or deny them service, for the reason that they are black.

That sounds nice, but can't possibly matter. "We're closing your account, for, uhm, no reason." How are you going to argue against that?

Exactly.

This is what I received:

"Additionally, we are electing to terminate your Cash App account (as allowed in our Terms of Service, section XIII.8). As a result of the termination of your Cash App account, you will no longer be able to use Cash App and its services going forward."

XIII.8. Termination of Account

We can terminate or deny you access to our services at any time, for any reason. You can also choose to deactivate your account at any time.

We may terminate these Cash App Terms or any Terms, or suspend or terminate your Account or your access to any Service, at any time for any reason, including a violation of the Terms. We may add or remove, suspend, stop, delete, discontinue or impose conditions on Services or any feature or aspect of a Service. We will take reasonable steps to notify you of termination or these other types of Service changes by email or at the next time you attempt to access your Account. You may also terminate the Cash App Terms applicable to your Account by deactivating your Account at any time.

"I <did x>, and then they took the rare action of closing my account (which they're not allowed to do in response to <x>) for no apparent reason" is more than enough to

1. Get discovery to gather further evidence

2. In the absence of a convincing rebuttal from Google ("he was sharing copyrighted movies via Google Drive, and per our policies we closed his account like we closed 1000 other peoples accounts. Our policy is exhibit A, the list of copyrighted movies he shared is exhibit B, the list of other similar accounts is exhibit C"), is probably enough to win a civil court case by itself.

The standard for civil cases is generally "on the balance of probabilities", not beyond a reasonable doubt like in criminal cases. Courts are allowed to rule on what seems like the likely reason that someone did something.

Disclaimer: Not a lawyer, bladdy blah blah, if you take this as legal advice your both a fool for not consulting a lawyer, and taking advice from someone on a topic where they themselves admitted that they don't know if Google is even prohibited from doing business with you in this hypothetical.

Race is a protected class, and hiring based on race is specifically protected.

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