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Comment by kevmo314 | Hacker News Reader

The article states that they exercised their options.

No, it doesn't.

They exercised 15,625 options of the 25,000. The OP sent $781.25 to NVIDIA. The remaining 9,375 options were not exercised, they expired 90 days after April 16th 1996.

Only in hindsight, 30 years later, has the OP realized that the other 9,375 had vested due to ambiguous wording in the agreement. The article is about the 9,375 that were not exercised.

So 15,625 were exercised.

Yeah. The issue being that at the time both the CFO and their external counsel Cooley told me in writing that 15,625 shares had vested. Those representations were incorrect. And I (quite reasonably) replied on them rather than checking the original documents. Which I did only 30+ years later. In legal terms, the CFO Gani’s 1996 letter is a negligent misrepresentation, a species of fraud under Cal. Civ. Code § 1709-1710.

> replied on them

I think this is a typo.

Well, the bad news is that the statute of limitations on that appears to be three years in California.

I'm no expert, but did your lawyers clarify if a statute of limitation start from the date you learned there might be a discrepancy, instead of all those years ago?

While no one's hands might be clean in this, at the end of the day the party with the resources and expertise is equipped differently.

It might not hurt to get some more opinions even if they end up in the same place.

They learned about it when they signed the contract. Saying “I forgot about it“ doesn’t reset the statute of limitations.

This does not apply because he was in possession of the agreement (grant document) the whole time. You don't get a decades long extension of the statute of limitations because you neglected to check what an agreement in your possession actually said.

What happened to 15,625 shares you did exercise? I guess they are worth over $1.5 billion as of today?

I would venture the fate of the bygone shares would be the same as those 15,625. Sold early. Paperhands (aren't most of us?).

I imagine he sold all of it by now

He's saying they didn't actually get exercised as-in stock was never made his. They took the money and didn't issue him the shares, but the statue of limitations is gone on the fraud.

No that’s not what’s being said. Nvidia gave him the wrong total. He paid for that total. He’s saying there’s a world in which he is owed the other 9k shares. He put some lawyers on it and it turns out it won’t be this world.

oops, yeah. I understood that wrong.

If he's arguing that he could effectively revoke his past final decision to sell it all at not-billions by demanding withdrawal of hypothetical now-billions from NVIDIA, I wouldn't be sure what system will happily grant him that...

> And I (quite reasonably) replied on them rather than checking the original documents.

Putting aside the fact that any claims here are almost certainly time barred after 30 years, ostensibly, your attorney explained to you that because you had the grant in your possession, claiming that you reasonably relied on the company's statement about what the grant said would weigh heavily against any misrepresentation or fraud causes of action in a lawsuit.

Equitable tolling??

Might as well sue.

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