Hacker News Reader

Comment by binlog | Hacker News Reader

Why would anyone buy that right? Statute of limitations is crystal clear here. The case is going to be dismissed the moment it gets in front of a judge.

View on HN

Out of curiosity, why do you think you know that?

https://selfhelp.courts.ca.gov/civil-lawsuit/statute-limitat...

> Breach of a written contract: 4 years from the date the contract was broken.

Which part do you think is debatable?

Not sure; I didn't go to law school.

The lawyers representing the author did, and came to this exact conclusion.

This part:

> Sometimes, if the problem (like the injury or damage) was not discovered right away, the statute of limitations generally starts counting from the date the problem was discovered or should reasonably have been discovered, whichever comes first.

The problem should reasonably have been discovered when they signed the contract and it wasn’t fulfilled. No new information has come to light in the 30 years since.

For reasons, but the main one is that the author stated that they and their attorneys have seriously explored this case and reached this conclusion.

I think you may be right but also may be wrong. If that was indeed the case, they wouldn't have to respond to him for a whole year. nVidia knew they screwed up back in 1996, but was 100% uncertain like you are. There is 5-10% chance that a judge would accept this on the basis that this was grossly incompetently misrepresented in 1996 and OP actually has some ground for suing. There is serious financial loss here. If I received 1000 shares from Meta for my work during my full time employee and then keep thinking I had 1000 shares invested for 30 years, but turns out no I do not, that's a big loss!

It’s the other way round. For 30 years he has happily believed that he received 16k shares. Now he learns that he was owed another 7k at the time but neither party in the transaction noticed and he wants them to pay the difference now.

Presumably he kept those 16k shares and is sitting on $2b, so why bother with the hassle. Normal people don’t care about the second billion.

Or he sold them years ago for far less than they are worth now, in which case he could have a claim for the original shares which were worth a few k after interest.

It’s not even shares though, which he would have a much stronger case with. It’s options, which inevitably have an expiry date.

Nvidia's share price at the IPO was $12 and his strike price was $0.05. He's owed the monetary value of those options, basically ($12-$0.05) times number of options and that should be around $100k+. He was never owed shares.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com