Plaintiff in tech hiring suit asks judge to reject settlement | Hacker News Reader

Plaintiff in tech hiring suit asks judge to reject settlement

uk.reuters.com

106 points001sky35 comments

The money quote from the plaintiff...

""As an analogy," Devine wrote, "if a shoplifter is caught on video stealing a $400 iPad from the Apple Store, would a fair and just resolution be for the shoplifter to pay Apple $40, keep the iPad, and walk away with no record or admission of wrongdoing? Of course not.""

That does happen though. Apple could choose to not press charges and let him walk away free.

This is not actually true. The District Attorney can choose to ignore Apple's choice.

The question isn't whether it happens but whether it would be considered a just outcome. He is drawing a comparison between something that is easily recognized as "getting off easy" to something that is harder to conceptualize because of the absolute size of the amounts involved.

It is a just outcome if the affected party feels satisfied. Just because there wasn't punishment (or wasn't "enough" punishment in someone's eyes) doesn't mean the outcome wasn't just. Justice doesn't mean punishment.

Obviously the affected party in this case does not feel satisfied. That's why he wrote the letter to the judge.

But he usually doesn't get to keep the iPad.

You are mistaken; it is the prosecutor who decides whether or not charges are filed, not the victim.

The concept of "pressing charges" is basically a myth.

Only for specific crimes, IIRC.

Surely you can decide for yourself if you press charges or not on a break-in or a theft (sometimes such cases are just a case of misunderstanding, etc, so people can just work it out and nobody needs to go to court)

I think murder or assault is out of your hands, as it's considered in the public's interest to prosecute such crimes.

That is not accurate.

324 mln divided by 64K people is about 5K. So, you didn't hire me because of your little shitty agreement, I didn't get a 30-40K or more salary a year (not to mention possibly better benefits) and you give away 5 grand to sing "don't worry be happy?" Great math. When someone downloads a song it gets smacked with 100K bill and a jail time. But when you don't get a job, 5K sounds just about right.

Welcome to the game.

And that's before the lawyers take their cut ($75 million). That slices it down to <$4K average.

I'm glad that Michael Devine has the courage to turn down the settlement. I think it helps that there seems to be clear evidence of wrongdoing.

Also, maybe I am misunderstanding something, but does the plaintiff have to ask for the settlement to be rejected?

I thought that for a settlement to go through, all parties have to agree, otherwise it goes to court.

I'm not sure if being one of the named plaintiffs matters once it is certified as a class. He can probably opt out of the class though, just like any other member.

Tobacco class actions offer some examples about what happens when sections of the class disagree (at least settle early): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agree...

Class action lawsuits are either opt-out (23b3) or in some cases (23b1-2) mandatory with no choice but to be bound. This is especially problematic because the actor in the driver's seat -- the lawyers that bring the suits -- have very different incentives from thier nominal clients. In fact, thier incentives are more closely aligned with the defendant. The defendant wants a quick resolution and global peace, the lawyers want a quick resolution and a large fee, so the settlements tend to offer global peace for a large fee. The class gets worthless injunctive relief, or a coupon, or a charity of the lawyers' choice gets some money, or maybe class members get $10 each but only if they fill out a bunch of paperwork. Class actions rarely ever go to trial. In theory the judge is supposed to protect absent class members but usually they act as a rubber stamp.

Class actions do not comport with due process and should be abolished. If lawyers want to bring mass tort suits let them sign up clients.

Wow, does your last sentence turn 180 from the (otherwise excellent) analysis. If class actions don't help plaintiffs enough, shouldn't we be looking for a stronger solution?

"Strength" is not a metric here. There is a principal-agent problem because the lawyers are able to convince a court to give them the right to represent the class. They then have a much lower standard of responsibility to the class.

You need a solution that aligns the plaintiff's interests and the lawyer's interests - one way to do that is to have them negotiate with the plaintiff rather than the defendant to get paid.

Of course, this puts a greater burden on potential defendants - you'd probably see lower volume of suits and higher damages / penalties. It's unclear how the total would shake out.

[Edit: I misunderstood fiatmoney.]

Strength is not a metric if your goal is to require moral perfection from those representing workers before placing any burden on law-breaking capitalists -- a not uncommon perspective among those concerned about "fiatmoney". If, on the other hand, your goal is to allow the rare employment market in which workers actually have some power to function as a free market, then you might treat legal principal agent problems as issues to be managed rather than excuses to allow capitalists to break the law with effective impunity.

Who said anything about "moral perfection"? And how is changing the relationship between a lawyer and their putative clients not "treating it as an issue to be managed"? Whatever you do, if you make it more difficult for a lawyer to cash out early (via bullshit "settlements" like this, or the ever popular "here's a coupon for our products" or "here's a donation to the lawyer's friend's charity"), there will be fewer suits brought. That's a good thing on balance if the ones that remain actually have a deterrent effect - currently class-actions are more or less a cost of doing business. Whether that happens is more or less a technocratic problem.

For what it's worth, I hope Devine is successful. It would have been better had there been prosecutions all around with appreciable jail time, but unless a state AG wants to get involved, remitting the full damages and a significant penalty will have to do.

Having clients in the driver's seat is a stronger solution. If lawyers had to solicit clients, and settlements had to be approved by them, would cy pres or coupon settlements ever happen? Would the case we are discussing right now have been settled for such a small amount per plaintiff?

It's true that some other cases, where the harm to each individual is tiny, won't be brought at all, but I tend to think such harms are better suited to be ameliorated by regulators rather than through the misuse of the tort system.

I'm trying to understand these issues better, but my initial inclination would be to treat class actions similar to antitrust lawsuits. Individuals can bring anti-trust lawsuits for specific damages, but my impression is that broad antitrust lawsuits are generally initiated by federal/state attorneys general.

This makes sense when the plaintiffs are, for example, "everyone who buys gas". But in this particular "no hire" case, I do think that the the harm done here is pretty extensive - it may well extend to people who never applied for positions at these companies. Obviously, you were harmed if you were specifically prevented from switching jobs, and you were harmed if you were were passive but specifically never contact about a new position. But what if you might have had a chance to move up in a company if someone else had moved on to a new job at a different company? What if your own staff was aggressively targeted by a recruiter who would otherwise have tried to hire from google or apple, because your engineers were fair game and there's weren't as part of a secret collusive (and absolutely illegal) agreement? What if you applied for a job at these places and might have had a crack at if if there had been more turnover?

Collusion is very, very damaging to a free economy. This is broad and far reaching. I think this might be better handled by an atty general who doesn't stand to profit personally from the outcome.

I tend to agree with you (see my sister comment about regulators regulating) but it's worth noting that in this particular case the Justice Department did pursue the case but agreed to the most ridiculous settlement terms possible (the companies in question promised to follow the law for five years -- something they were already obligated to do.)

Edit: DOJ Press release http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/September/10-at-1076.html

I wasn't aware of that, though now that you mention it, I do have a vague memory about this. Would you post a link?

Class actions work well when a great number of people are harmed for a relatively small sum each. Let's say company XYZ screwed up something in their product that is worth about $100 damage per incident, but it impacts 250k customers. It's really not worth it for any one person to sue XYZ for $100. But with a class action at least XYZ will feel some pinch for their wrong-doing.

Work well for whom? The outcome of cases like your example are the lawyers getting $$$$ and the class members getting a 20%-off-your-next-purchase coupon.

Well, compared to the individual suing which would cost them potentially tens of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees for their $100 verdict, they did pretty darn well to get your coupon for a free frostie.

Class actions aren't about justice for individual plaintiffs. Hell, lawsuits in general aren't about getting justice for plaintiffs. In wrongful death cases, the courts can't wave their hands and bring the dead back to life. Money is used as an imperfect substitute. X died, and amount Y is what their life would have been worth. Not because people want to boil away everything that made that life what it was into a dollar amount, but because there's really no other option. That's not the same as an idealized sense of "justice" that people talk about when they state their intentions to "have their day in court."

Attorneys don't push for settlements because they're greedy or unethical; they try to settle because it's almost always better than litigating. Litigation is risky, and even strong claims can lose at trial. Neither side wants to roll the dice.

Class actions are almost exclusively about leveraging the individual class members into a means of stopping a given behavior rather than achieving significant compensation for them. And in most cases, you'll find that the behavior's effects are relatively limited on an individual basis, but significant when considered in aggregate.

Litigation is expensive. When you're looking at a case where litigating your claim can cost you well over 500k if you're very lucky, even significant awards can amount to nothing more than Pyrrhic victories. Even your average punitive damages, when they're granted, aren't necessarily sufficient to push you into the black.

In this case, it's highly unlikely that any individual plaintiff could ever prove damages in excess of their legal costs. Individually, it's unlikely for the class members to come out ahead even assuming they're able to litigate in the first place. And they're damned sure unlikely to be able to change the behavior as a result.

It's easy to complain about class actions but those complaints have to be put in perspective. Environmental law alone would be sufficient to prove my point. In any case, I'd recommend this for a pretty well-balanced and fair primer to class actions (it's focused on procedure, but I think that's a good thing for this purpose):

http://law.duke.edu/grouplit/papers/classactionalexander.pdf

I am under the impression that the information that this suit could have revealed about Mr Jobs' character was potentially far more damaging than any settlement or award the defendants might have to pay.

To put it another way, I get the impression that settlement here is primarily for PR damage control, and only secondarily for limiting what the defendants must ultimately pay.

Does this idea have any support? If I am wrong, please tell me why.

If I am wrong, please tell me why.

I don't think your necessarily wrong that it would make him look bad, but it would have to be some really extraordinary revelations to make his character look worse than he already does. Maybe it would mean more widespread exposure of his real character, but for all the praise that can be thrown at him, anyone paying attention is already aware he was an all-around petulant asshole willing to act immorally and illegally to get his way.

I agree that the settlement is mainly about damage control. I also think the company most affected by said negative PR is Google.

I'm still waiting for Eric to apologize to the recruiter who was fired for contacting an Apple employee and for Jonathan Rosemberg to have the decency of resigning.

What do you mean by "Jonathan Rosemberg"? I think he already resigned from Google.

Considering the severity of what was done (basically, keeping down the salaries of everyone in the industry), this is good news.

Haha, I wish they get their day in the court.

I think the lawyers of plaintiffs thought they could 'manipulate' their 'clients' so that the lawyers could simply cut and run with their outsized fee case but little did they know their 'clients' are not some easily manipulated people who really need some cash now.

These clients are well educated and have the money to wait out AND can get a great job anywhere.

I really wish to hear the real story of this case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com