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Comment by shadefinale | Hacker News Reader

They lost default judgements because they did not appear. Either they thought it was fake or they thought they'd lose, but they were served and did not appear.

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Or they thought that the losses were acceptable to avoid having to make sworn statements about the series of events that are still at issue in the previous owner's case and some events that may very well still be charged by Oregon prosecutors.

So they chose to lose a case on merits related to the other case instead of making statements that would help (if they are in the right)?

That’s one possibility, yes.

Quantum physics guarantees us anything is a possibility. The question is, is it a likely one at all? And the overwhelmingly likely reasons are obvious to anyone with half a brain, given all the surrounding context here.

They didn't even lose any money, because by closing the store the damages were never paid.

It's really depressing to see to be honest.

I believe they would need to dissolve the business entity. These default judgments against them should count as debt that needs to be paid before the business is closed unless they declare bankruptcy in court and not like Michael Scott.

While this is true at the moment, closing a store and transferring its assets to another store owned by the same people could reasonably be alleged to be fraudulent transfer. The owners don't just get to keep whatever was in the store because they closed it before they paid.

A default judgement is still a loss. Why would not they not fight back small claims cases, which would be trivially easy for someone with their resources, if they could win?

[retracted]

I don't know what point you're trying to make. But also please watch the video, they submitted multiple separate claims via different aggrieved parties, this totaled $100k, despite the low individual small claims maxima.

Ooh, I missed that! I thought I’d watched it a couple days ago but I might have dozed off due to unrelated life tired; will revisit, thanks.

They can't even serve papers because they're being relentlessly harassed by Police who have immediately banned them from serving them. In part 2, cops even verify the court case and he has a process server-- but they just refuse to. One of many different cops eventually took the papers to serve them, and ended up coming back saying "he didn't want them."

Additionally, the original business in Kaizer shutdown as soon as the default judgements went through.

Would it count as being served if bodycam shows that police handed him the papers and he gave them back or tossed them on the floor?

According to Ben, the bodycam footage of the officer's attempt to serve the papers is fully redacted, no audio/video at all.

Is there an Uber for process servers? Eventually someone would get through...

I am not stating that I think B&M would win. B&M's original intent was to force Ed and Ben into a pyrrhic victory via dragging out one lawsuit, even if they lost that one suit.

Without being able to run up Ed/Ben's legal costs, trying to defend these suits at all is just a further loss for B&M for no benefit.

I don't think it was the deciding factor, but Ben also sent a fake Guinness award to the store around the same time they were being served. It is within the realm of possibility that they thought Ben was bluffing with the lawsuits and tried to call his bluff just to find out it was all real after they failed to appear.

Nah, the whole Guinness thing was obviously just a bit for the video. Clearly the franchise would not fall for that, when you can easily check that you were summoned to small claims (and they also probably get some form of direct communication from the court I would guess).

Legal costs for a small claims suit is tiny, and would be easily doable for them if they could win it. Again, there is a reason they lost those cases.

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