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Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

I think this is only proving the parent's point, that the legal system is completely unable to deal with the megacorps. Shrug. I don't read those results the same way you do.

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...or megacorps have functional legal departments to stop them from doing obviously illegal stuff. Of the cases they actually get sued for, there's enough complexity and genuine question of law that they can't straightforwardly prosecuted. There's a reason why basically all states had to pass bills to reclassify gig work companies, rather than winning slam dunk cases with years of back pay.

In cases companies megacorps are clearly breaking laws, they're appropriately fined. eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44767461

Maybe all of this basically cashes out to "the worst the legal system can do at that point is penalize them with the equivalent of pocket change" to you, but to me this looks like a functioning legal system where defendants actually have a fair chance of winning.

> In cases companies megacorps are clearly breaking laws, they're appropriately fined.

Not always! lawyers representing classes in class actions don't always negotiate as hard as they could or should during settlements. You're probably familiar with federal judge Lucy Koh's prominent cases.

Not really understanding your argument that everything is fine, and there's nothing to see here.

> to stop them from doing obviously illegal stuff

That's not what the legal departments seem to be used for though.

Again, you don't see the illegal behavior that they didn't try. For instance, Uber probably could have nabbed more market share by allowing drivers to pick people up off the streets as well, but that would obviously break taxi medallion laws. Uber worked within the pre-booked ride service loophole. Same goes for contractor classification. They probably could have gotten better customer satisfaction ratings if they prohibited drivers from using multiple apps, but that would obviously look bad for them if they wanted to argue drivers were contractors.

> Again, you don't see the illegal behavior that they didn't try.

We don't know if that was due to legal departments or other factors, so claiming it was due to legal departments seems more like hope/wishing/assuming rather than actual knowledge. :(

if the legal department does it, it's not illegal.

> or megacorps have functional legal departments to stop them from doing obviously illegal stuff.

Is that why Apple, Google and Meta ship a billion dollars every few years to the EU Cour of Justice?

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