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Comment by TedDoesntTalk | Hacker News Reader

This is a subpoena from a legal team, NOT a court. You are free to write “we don’t know” for much of the questions or even write “too burdensome to answer”. Such subpoenas have little teeth.

Hire a lawyer for a few hours to confirm what I say since I’m some random internet guy.

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From the article:

We've also been commanded to drop everything we're doing and go tesify on these matters _in person_, thousands of miles away from us, by the stated deadline :|

So it's not just a matter of writing "we don't know". They have to produce a lot of material and then travel 1000's of miles to show up in the court in person.

These specific people are being compelled to do that or the company is being compelled to show up in person? Those are wildly different demands. I find it hard to believe that specific productive employees of the company are being compelled to show up in court rather just some hired legal representatives of the company.

Right, but hiring a legal representative is going to be very expensive for a small organization.

It’s not just the few hours they’ll be testifying, or giving deposition. A reasonable corporate representative is going to need to do quite a bit of prep work and review of relevant materials. So, that’s both a legal cost, and a productivity cost for whoever is collecting those documents and briefing the corporate representative.

“Just some hired legal representatives” hides quite a bit of cost.

Yep. It's easily going to be in the 5 digits.

you can call an attorney and pay an hourly fee usually between 100 - 400/hr to talk with an attorney about your case or pay a retainer fee for 10 hours... attorneys that throw out 5 digit numbers when asked for a price are rip offs

Often I've gotten the initial consultation/advice for free on how to do it yourself. The point of lawyer is protecting you when you are in danger, and in my experience they're happy to tell you that you don't need a lawyer here, and give some general tips on the process.

Right, but the suggestion wasn't "have a short consult with a lawyer". That's not cheap, but definitely won't break the bank for most small businesses.

The suggestion was "hire a legal representative" to be the corporate witness. I would assume that's a suggestion similar to the one in this article (https://www.agilelaw.com/blog/hiring-a-lawyer-to-be-your-30b...) about hiring a lawyer to be your 30(b)(6) deponent.

So, let's assume we hire a lawyer at $300/hour. Let's say they'll be a witness for 6 hours. But, they need to be carefully briefed and prepped on all the topics that they would need to be a witness for. Maybe that's 40 hours of work.

46*$300 = $13,800.

As the article on 30(b)(6) depositions notes: "So to do it right, the lawyer will need to be thoroughly prepped on the 30(b)(6) notice topics, which will certainly take time and cost the client money. No one said litigation is cheap."

I think most small-businesses would probably choose to use an internal employee to be their corporate representatives, especially in a matter such as this where they aren't directly involved in the litigation.

Honest question: Why not do what most of the ass-clowns do when they get in front of congress - "I don't know, Senator. I have no recollection, Congresswoman. I plead the 5th, You Honor. No, we don't spy on Americans." etc.? Seems like no one ever actually faces any penalties for this.

When I read the pompous first sentence of a US subpoena “COMMANDING” the recipient to do something, I like to think of it as a direct order from Vigo the Carpathian[0]

[0] https://gfycat.com/forthrightredfurseal

This shows that SimulaVR is run by a bunch of children. Every subpoena says this, but you work with the attorneys to figure out the time and manner that works best for the deposition. I routinely flew thousands of miles to do depositions in places that worked best for the deposed.

And complaining about how the subpoena's asking for tons of documents. Again, every subpoena does this; you have to negotiate with the attorneys on the other side to figure out what they actually want. If SimulaVR was suing Meta, then yeah, Meta will play hardball. But they're a third-party here - chances are, attorneys for Meta are looking for very specific things (namely, economics to support Meta's arguments about the VR market) and SimulaVR will be able to negotiate a way to provide that info without turning their company inside and out.

And if you are asking WHY SimulaVR should be required to provide ANY info at all... well, that's the American legal system. Courts and parties have broad power to obtain evidence from third parties.

Basically, SimulaVR needs to grow up and hire lawyers to handle this.

So what if they don't have the funds? What if they have only so much for this but then have to close the business down because of it? It's a small startup.

You. Work. With. The. Attorneys.

Why is this so hard to grasp. This subpoena is to get certain market information. SimulaVR can negotiate with Meta to provide the information in a way that's not super burdensome for them. I did this all the time when I was a lawyer.

SimulaVR is a FRIENDLY WITNESS for Meta, since they can presumably provide evidence that Meta operates in a competitive VR market. This means Meta's lawyers will be very accommodating to get the info they need.

And yeah guess what, you need to hire lawyers from time to time when you run a business. Just like you need to hire accountants. It sucks but that's how things are.

Haha friendly witness. Please hand over your current and future business plans over. What could possibly go wrong. Does nobody here see how that could backfire with Meta having such insight on your business?

Lol, you mean trusting Meta's people? That's insane.

All the accounting you need to do at the beginning of your business can be done by yourself, or very cheaply. Fighting Meta's claim to your business secrets is not going to be cheap.

If Meta is so friendly they should pay the legal fees for the lawyers that they're forcing Simula to hire.

Judging by the responses in this thread, it seems like many folks on HN have never worked with an attorney before (which isn't too surprising).

Do you have any advice on how to find a competent attorney with reasonable fees who can do the specific work that you need done? The one time I had to do this for my business on short notice, I used Yelp and Google, and it was somewhat disastrous. I think it would be really helpful for me, and a lot of other folks, to know the right way to do this.

Unfortunately I think word of mouth is the best way to find good attorneys. Ask people who run similar businesses as you who they use? If there's a chamber of commerce in your city or town, you could ask them for references.

I'll chime in to say that I was very happy with @grellas's firm in Silicon Valley. I found them the right mix of startup-friendly and competent in tech issues. (grellas.com).

Thank you!

You charge them time and materials, and cap it. Or ignore it. Best to just write back that they are too small, no revenue, no funding.

Ignore the tone of these things. Legal is commanded to write in this manner.

So what if they are children? Fuck children?

They received a letter that looks important and official to them, and looks to them like something they have to comply with.

Are you giving legal advice to ignore letters from lawyers?

> Are you giving legal advice to ignore letters from lawyers?

The only advice I saw them give was to hire lawyers to help them deal with it.

They called them children and by inference incompetent to operate a business, because they took what the letter says at face value.

My question is a logical extension of that.

I'm not typically one to point at the HN guidelines, but you could have made your points and been informative without the insults. It's not helping anything and leading to otherwise unnecessary defensive back-and-forths.

> This shows that SimulaVR is run by a bunch of children [...] SimulaVR needs to grow up and hire lawyers to handle this.

It wasn't SimulaVR who responded to you, so why respond by insulting SimulaVR for the comment of someone else? They've already got legal counsel:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33111249

All SimulaVR did in their blog post is state the facts. They haven't refuted the point you said, and may be already looking into that.

Simula isn't even an American company.

You’re missing the point. The source of the subpoena is important. Subpoenas from lawyers are not something you have to answer completely. They have no teeth. They are not from a court of law.

I was once subpoenaed by the state of New York. It was worded similarly, asking for a bunch of information and my personal appearance. I have never lived or worked in New York, and at the time was just a broke college student, so taking time off school to fly there would be more than an inconvenience. The information they sought was related to a fraud case, and their fraudster had bought something from one of my websites in the past. After I actually talked to the investigators over email, they never actually expected me to travel to New York, they were just looking for dates and IP addresses relating to these sales, which I emailed and my participation in their investigation was over. They didn't actually want me to go to New York, that was just boilerplate.

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