Hacker News Reader

Comment by pseingatl | Hacker News Reader

The Seller (Amazon client) operated his business from paycheck to paycheck (i.e. invoice to invoice) with no reserve fund, no insurance and no set-aside for legal. He lost the lawsuit because he never filed an appearance. There are lots of lawyers who would handle such a case for much less than a $25,000 retainer. At the end of the day, though, if your business depends on Ebay, Google, Amazon or their ilk, you have no security.

View on HN

>"He lost the lawsuit because he never filed an appearance." //

Is that how law works in USA, forget finding if the claimant has a case just destroy the little guy?

As this was a tort case, assuming it's like English law (big assumption), then the measure of guilt is the balance of probabilities. On balance with the evidence available did the defendant commit copyright infringement? Doesn't appear so - there's one DVD that no one can actually link to the supplier.

Also "He lost the lawsuit". Wasn't he just the CEO of an LLC?

Basically yes. Civil law between companies is first and foremost a welfare system for legal folks and a club to beat people with. If you don't have the money to pay, you can't play, you simply lose. This unfortunately is the case with most criminal law as well.

When people scream and scream and scream about tort reform in the US, this sort of stuff is mostly what they're talking about. There are a wealth of lawsuits filed every year which have no reasonable basis that do nothing but make lawyers rich.

Depends on whether he was named personally or not. Based on his post, a default judgment was entered. You'd have to take a look at the complaint. What the facts are in reality really doesn't matter--unfortunately--because he did not appear in a tribunal to prove or assert those facts. Don't forget that in U.S. courts (as in the UK) the uncorroborated testimony of a single witness is enough to meet the burden of proof, even in a criminal case. Whether you prevail or not is something else, but in terms of a minimum threshold, all you need is the testimony of the person who placed the order and who received counterfeit goods. The burden then shifts to you to prove that a) the witness is mistaken or lying or b) the goods are not counterfeit.

But he never showed up. Moral of the story: buy insurance. Budget for legal in the same way you budget for accountants.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com