Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by mitxela | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

mitxela

Lawsuit time!

View on HN

I would suspect that entities affected don't have money for a lawsuit.

Are most Americans not able to fight an international tech conglomerate at the drop of a hat?

Even a failed lawsuit has the potential to cost the company a lot more money than it costs you.

If it's small claims court the company has to pay a lawyer hourly to attend as their representative, while you just have to show up and pay the small court fee.

If it's big claims court, well, you always have the option to represent yourself, and then you'll probably lose, but at least you won't have spent much money.

Small claims court!

...which Google then wins on appeal, such as in the follow up from an example someone posted above of a "win" in small claims.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-google-bothered-to-ap_b_2...

If you lose on appeal perhaps your case wasn’t that strong to begin with.

If I were the author if that article I would rest easy knowing that Google blew 5 figures on lawyers to recover $800 and enhance my journalism.

This is what class actions are literally for. Yes, I know it sucks that the only people who make money are the lawyers, but it can result in some behavioral change.

Google is fine attracting bots when it makes money for itself, but it can clearly detect that bot traffic when it has to pay out. There is likely huge amounts of money in total that Google has collected money from in ad buys but that they could also detect as bots. I would think class action lawyers would be all over this given the total amount of money involved.

Unless, of course, the terms of service require mandatory binding arbitration and bar you from the recourse of the legal system entirely.

I agree these clauses suck, but consumer mass arbitration is also a thing.

Until the terms start including "mass arbitration" provisions limiting consumers ability to even use the psuesocourts the companies force.

It doesn't have to be a class action. In fact it's worse for the defending company if they get 500 separate lawsuits than one class action.

Problem is the guy here spent $100 on ads that went to bots, and thus can get his $100 back after spending a million on lawyers.

Small claims court is designed to minimize costs

Yes and winning from Google in small claims court is definitely possible: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-i-sued-google-and-won_b_1...

Edit:

AI can be a great help here, ask it:

- How to prepare your case for your country.

- Where to file and how much it going to cost.

- Help you find weaknesses in your case and what you can do to fix those.

- Rewrite your text in proper legalese (I do recommend to prepare the your arguments yourself to avoid over generalization from an LLM).

Of course you need to verify because of hallucinations but showing up is half the battle here. Big (tech) corps + internal bureaucracy makes it quite expensive for fight these cases. Especially if there are many different countries.

You might get your 100 dollars but google will ban you / stop doing any business with you the minute you start that so you better be sure you don't need your account or google services going forward.

Then you sue them again in small claims court for the damages of not having access to your accounts (to which other online services require/are tied to which are not Google-owned properties) and have the judge force your reinstatement with a warning to Google that such punitive actions taken maliciously against the user will result in a prior fine*exponential multiplicative levied for each occurrence, with the base fine amount being the prior multiplicative fine issued.

That leaves Google with very few chances to fuck up before they're financially wiped out, and this is a ruling you can have issued in a small claims court.

How would you force the judge to do that? Has this strategy ever worked for anyone you can cite? Have you tried it yourself?

Otherwise, I'm not sure why just being able to imagine a knock out David vs. Goliath win against Google has any value whatsoever as a viable legal strategy.

It's certainly valid and it has been done in other situations, but the details are different. I don't know that of any case where it's been tried against Google. It's certainly reasonable to think it could work against Google, but the details of would it actually work in the real world? I have no idea. Even if there was precedent that someone could cite, that doesn't mean that your case would win.

If you really want to know, you need to consult a lawyer, not ask here.

"How would you force the judge to do that?"

You read my wording wrong - you wouldn't force the judge, the judge forces Google.

Was there a follow up if he ever managed to collect on the $721 judgment?

EDIT: Ah, missed the follow up link at the end. No, he did not get any money.

Google appealed to a superior court (sending their lawyers this time) and the award was modified to $0.

So he didn't actually win, the online meme that "small claims are the one weird trick to beat the mega corps" doesn't usually hold up to scrutiny. I doubt throwing ChatGPT into the mix would have helped against their in-house counsel.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-google-bothered-to-ap_b_2...

How much compensation do you get from a class action? $5? That is only a win for a lawyers. The problem is lack of regulatory action and law enforcement. We all pay taxes for these bodies to protect us and more often than not they collude with corporations and do nothing.

Here's a quote from their terms and conditions:

  Governing Law; Venue.
  All claims arising out of or relating to the AdSense
  Terms or the Services will be governed by California
  law, excluding California's conflict of laws rules,
  and will be litigated exclusively in the federal or
  state courts of Santa Clara County, California, USA,
  and you and Google consent to personal jurisdiction
  in those courts.

Okay, I do indeed live in Santa Clara County, California, so if I ever get in a situation where I might want to sue Google Ads, I might as well try and see how local courts work, especially if the claim is small enough for the small claims court. For those who do not live here, it might be a prohibitive requirement.

Considering the government routinely both decides Google is violating the law but is unwilling to do things to change it, like split apart their ad monopoly, suing them is most likely futile.

Better ways to spend your money, like funding competitors.

You still get your money back

Reply on news.ycombinator.com