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Comment by gbog | Hacker News Reader

> a ClearChannel radio station advertised 'accidentally' that we were sold out and tickets wouldn't be available at the door. Nobody showed up.

Didn't you sue them? I hear all the time that US is a country dominates by its lawyers, and that you can sue you physician if he didn't forecast your cancer ten years in advance. Here you seem to have a legitimate case, and would win some money they would find a less disgusting way to fight next time. Or maybe, or surely I'm wrong and laws don't protect people and businesses in US the same way they do in Europe.

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No, of course I didn't sue them and they knew I wasn't going to sue. It isn't like there is even a phone number or person that you can call to complain. And really, what would I sue for exactly? How could I prove they did that on purpose?

I'm also not JWZ (even though my club was on the same street as his). I didn't have endless gobs of Netscape money to sink into dealing with stuff like that... and that is a big reason why my business died. This is just one story of many issues we faced.

Lesson learned: never open a night club despite how good your intentions are.

> How could I prove they did that on purpose?

You shouldn't need to.

If their mistake did cause harm to your business, they should pay for it. Having more or less money than the other part should have zero correlation with the result of a justice judgement, because having more or less money do not change the facts that have happened and should be judged.

At least that's how we conceive justice in France (eg "dommages et intérêts"), but after reading the US-DE comparison [1] I understand I am probably wrong.

- [1] http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/us-d.html

I mostly depends on how much resources you can provide to your legal team verses what your opponent can. The vast majority of the time, it boils down to who has more money. The exceptions are usually due to public agencies or organizations with a “dog in the fight” that would benefit in the long term if the underdog wins.

ClearChannel/Ticketmaster is huge and it would probably take the backing of a corporation the size of Time Warner or Apple to challenge them. Issues like this aren’t usually “sexy” enough for PR focused firms like the ACLU or FSF or whatever would be apropos here to get involved with, at least initially.

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