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Comment by mvdtnz | Hacker News Reader

This is absurd. This is just as much as indictment of ridiculous American courts as it is the corporations prosecuting such a case. What is happening in that clown country that a civil case against a person who wasn't even involved in the infraction can be judged liable when they are not even present to defend themselves? America is a bully nation.

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I don’t understand what the companies hope to gain out of this aside from loads of bad publicity?

That was my first thought too. Perhaps companies can't easily differentiate between cases of stolen identity and cases where a bad actor claims their identity was stolen.

Maybe I misread but if they were Exparte, were they implying she wasn't there and it's possible all these verdicts were handed down without any of her input? In that case the companies may not / wouldn't know? Either way still a horrible situation.

Ex parte just means it’s an emergency and you need the court to move fast

No, ex parte means not requiring a party that would normally be required. It is _also_ used in emergencies because the process of pleadings, answers, and replies would be too slow, so you are asking the court to temporarily ignore the rule that the other party respond before the court issues some sort of order or response.

You still have to argue your way out of notice.

I expect they want a judgement for a specific damage, then when they can’t collect they have insurance to cover that specific amount. Without a judgement for an amount, their insurance would pay out a lesser amount.

Then I assume that the woman they harassed will get a cut of the insurance money for the unnecessary stress they endured?

Otherwise the court should just throw this out. It’s only 1.2m.

I don’t see any evidence that the company thought they were harassing someone. It seems they were just routinely pursuing someone they thought harmed them.

Hopefully, the judgement will be dismissed since it’s based on identity fraud.

>Without a judgement for an amount, their insurance would pay out a lesser amount.

Who in their right mind would insure Adidas (or any other internationally famous brand) for trademark infringement? You're almost guaranteed to pay out millions in "damages" per year.

Corporations insure for all sorts of things and a company as big as Adidas must certainly have operational risk insurance [0] for things like this.

I remember many years ago, the startup I worked for was required to have insurance as part of our funding round and it covered stuff like officers freaking out in public and all sorts of odd things I didn’t think was insurable.

Corporate insurance is pretty interesting in this regard.

And no matter who is insuring, in the US it’s probably reinsured by Marsh McClellan [1], a huge reinsurance firm.

[0] https://content.naic.org/cipr-topics/operational-risk

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_McLennan

In the US property rights trump most other considerations, and courts are often biased in favor of property owners. Drivers frequently ignore cyclists and pedestrians, because they feel the road belongs to them, and to some extent the larger and fancier the vehicle the more carelessly they drive. Commercial drivers, who typically don't own the vehicle but can easily lose their commercial driving license, tend to be much more considerate of other road users.

(Of course I am being slightly hyperbolic here; deal with it.)

Drivers of nicer vehicles actually drive better around cyclists as they are incentivized to not acquire dents and scratches in their precious. It's the hoopty drivers who DGAF about damage and are likely most ignorant of their legal obligations who are the biggest threat.

Although I dont have a link to the studies, there have been some that both showed an inverse relationship and correlation between income and driver care. Not super definitive. Notably, "nicer" meaning newer is not a static state. Higher income drivers can more easily absorb the costs of minor damage, meaning theres some downward pressure on the reporting stats from both sides.

Despite the bigger risks/penalties involved with being unlicensed (driver and/or vehicle) and uninsured, it does seem that these at-risk drivers are less safe. Uninsured driver premiums are explicitly bundled. Accidents lead to worse physical outcomes for at-risk drivers (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259019822...)

This would correlate with your outlook.

Perhaps it depends where you live. Most of the people who ignore my existence and that of pedestrian crossings seem to be driving SUVs or huge pristine clean pickups.

I never said they were good or considerate drivers. They're just less bad for mostly selfish reasons. Ignorance of the law is still universal for US drivers.

Someone hasn’t been to Detroit

> What is happening in that clown country

Apparently a Trump-appointed judge in Miami is what is happening. Out of our hands unfortunately.

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